realm722 Posted August 25, 2020 Author Share Posted August 25, 2020 (edited) Game: Dragon Quest Builders 2 Analysis: My goodness is this game dense. I bought Dragon Quest Builders 2 for $24.99 back in late April 2020. You can get it for $15 on a good sale nowadays. Soooo this is actually a sequel to the original game that I played and platinumed last year. My experience with DQB1 was especially unique. I wrote about it earlier in this thread, here. To sum it up, I bought it, really loved my first week playing it, but due to the ways worlds/chapters worked in the original game - once I completed Cantlin all my progress was essentially lost and you start up completely fresh on a new island. Because of this, I abandoned the game for nearly 8 months before coming back to it, playing through it with a guide, and actually ended up enjoying playing it that way in order to complete all the speedrun trophies. I did not include it in that post - but I really felt like this type of game had so much more to offer, it was a pretty decent foundation, but there was a possibility for it to take another jump in terms of complexity and enjoyment to make the game truly special. and my goodness did they pull all of that off with this sequel. Where do I even begin with this? How about the fact you have your character guy, (I named my guy Tua since yanno.. we drafted Tua Tagovailoa being the new savior for the Dolphins) and you're paired up with a guy called Malroth. The entire heart of the story is your relationship with Malroth and how you're the builder, while he's the destroyer, or fighter as you compliment one another. He does about 3x as much damage to enemies as you did. You also have Lulu, this funny peppy if a bit demanding lady who forms your guys trio on the Isle of Awakening. This is your hub island - the one where everything you build stays permanently. I LOVE this. This is what the original lacked. The way they weaved it into the story and basically made it your playground to do whatever the hell you want in it. Of course, right away when you start playing the game doesn't let you build whatever - but it sets the table for it. Instead, you're going to end up traveling to 3 main other islands during the story playthrough. The 1st one is Furrowfield, you meet Rosie as well as a few other chaps where you learn to build a gigantic tree to bring life back to the island. There's a monster called Pastor Al who helps you out. Oh yea - I should mention there's the "Children of Hargon" that's basically like an oppressive religion that forbids all building and is enforced by the monsters in Dragon Quest. You meet Rosie who's the main farmer lady of the world and you along with a bunch of other buddies build the town up and bring it back to it's glory, and once you complete that task - you end up recruiting a good number of these guys back to the Isle of Awakening! From there you go to Khrumbul Dun, a desert island where you meet Babs! It's a mining/bar island and after a bit of a break from DQB2 I came back and played it all the way through to the end as I write this post. This chapter is so much damn fun. You help restore greatness to Gold Ironix. Babs is basically the bar dealer's daughter and she becomes a dancing pop icon for all the miners to cheer on (it's kinda weird... to be honest... how everyone loves this girl and wants to see her dance and marry her... made me pause a few times... but it's alright and wholesome in the end, we'll let it pass Japan) Finally, there's Moonbrooke where you bring a fallen kingdom and castle back to dynastic greatness with the help of Anessa and the King. (There's also a 4th level where you team-up with monsters and literally build a spaceship to fight the Father of All Destruction, it's NOT a spoiler - this is a Dragon Quest game and it's literally hinted at constantly while playing through the game). Meanwhile while you're doing these tasks, between island trips, you'll be fortifying the Isle of Awakening from building green pastures and meadows thanks to Wrigley, building a freaking pyramid for the Babs crew, and finally a castle for Lulu and the folks from Moonbrooke. Did I mention how dense this game is? THERE'S SO MUCH STORY AND DIALOGUE. Like, for all the complaints people have nowadays for being formulaic, played out, and tiresome, I don't know how you can play this game and not see that the developers poured their heart and soul into everything they created here. LOOK AT THIS DIALOGUE. SHANE THE CHILL PASTOR MAN IS NOT LETTING ME HAVE MY FREEDOM. This is a 40+ hour main story before you even get to the part of playing around in your sandbox island with all the tools available to you. I can't begin to tell you how bold that is. I wouldn't blame somebody if they just wanted to build a fun beautiful town/world and not deal with the story, but when you see the effort they put into it... how do you not feel at least a little bit bad for feeling that way? I say that as somebody who probably enjoyed the post-game more than the main story just because pissing about doing whatever I please and building a spa, bar, pool room, etc... is a delight. You can gain infinite resources for menial tasks by going to the Explorer Islands and once you check off all the items needed to be found you can gain infinite wood, earth, orange goo, bones, etc... it's like they thought of everything that was a short-coming in the original game when they were making this title. Did I mention you can recruit random monsters and add them to your island residency? From dogs, cats, and cows to Cosmic Chimera, Powie Yowie, and Great Sabercub's. These let you traverse islands more easily either more quickly or by allowing flight. Oh and things like killing machine's plant and harvest crops faster while mud hand's help make building blueprints on your island that you create more quickly. DO YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN BY HOW DENSE THIS IS? I didn't even mention there's an entire story focal point where you get kidnapped at sea and sent to a monster prison forced to perform slave labor as they try to reform you. YES, that happens in this game. Does this game have faults? Absolutely. As incredible as this game is, there's some pretty damning things here for those who now may be tempted to get it have to keep in mind. 1) The fundamental core of this game is repetitive. Joseph Anderson said on stream once that the worst game he's played on the Nintendo Switch was Dragon Quest Builders 1, because it was a constant tutorial for him. I don't know if I'd agree with that - but the DQB2 mission/quest/story portion is very similar to the original. A villager has an exclamation point. They want you either 1) Build a room for their needs / something they want to eat OR 2) Go someplace to get something that they need on the map. THAT'S IT. I suppose there's a 3rd with combat fighting but we'll get to that later. If you enjoy this formula, you will very much enjoy this game. If you don't, you won't. It's that simple. I personally love building the blueprints and meeting requirements that they set out for you - I understand why some would find it tired and a slog to get through. It's up to the individual playing to determine that. 2) For the amount of combat in this game, it's not very fun nor does it have an ounce of complexity. For 90% of the fights you will walk up to an enemy and spam the attack button until it dies. If it hits really hard, you'll back off between each attack running backwards, and then run back in to keep spamming. THAT'S THE COMBAT SYSTEM. There's no long range as far as I know, nor is there a roll button / any sheer ounce of depth to this system. You will fight individual monsters a lot for resources, but particularly on one island there's SO MUCH fighting this will even wear down those who don't mind a spammy gameplay set-up for attacking. I think a roll button or counter would have made it at least a little bit more entertaining for the player - I understand for the narrative the idea is you rely on Malroth to do all your dirty work but oof... it's too much at times. Finally, there's these annoying segments when a "higher being" is speaking to you/Malroth where you can't skip the text and it's on screen about 8x longer than it needs to be. Those parts suck. Finally, if all you care about is building with all the tools, having to play 40+ hours of story content to get there even while rushing would understandably be way too much for many people. But those faults aside, I am in utter awe how this game exists. Its' density is magnificent. I remember once I got to the Isle of Awakening at the end and playing through it with builder preferences and working for your villagers gratitude points I thought "how on EARTH did this get made?" This is the greatest "upgrade" between an original game and its' sequel that I have ever personally seen when it comes to fully maximizing the potential in a concept. Feel free to comment others that come to mind (Arkham Asylum ---> Arkham City is a pretty big leap). I'll say another thing, this game deserves to be just as popular as Animal Crossing: New Horizons - and even more so. I played AC:NH, and it's tedium made me stop playing with nothing to do. DQB2 can easily be somebody's 200+ hour dream game if you love building up your town and maintaining all your little villagers and determining where you want them to live. It deserves that global scale love that Animal Crossing and it... just didn't, at least not from the communities I'm in. Sorry Dragon Quest, Western audiences fail you again. Finally, trophy wise - it took me 4+ months to achieve the 28.32% platinum. Nothing is tricky and there are 0 missables, just enjoy playing the game as I did. The only thing I'll say is maybe when you're going to earn gratitude points to unlock all the islands - start going for Rare Breeder as you're going to have to wait to get all their heart points up as you're doing so. I think this game is spectacular, I really enjoyed it, and I hoped I've convinced anybody who enjoys Harvest Moon / Stardew Valley to give it a fair shake. Thanks for your time. Panda Score: 8.5 / 10 Edited January 18, 2023 by realm722 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJ_Radio Posted August 25, 2020 Share Posted August 25, 2020 I see you did all of Batman: Arkham City. Need to get back to that myself and finish off those DLC challenges. Just not really sure how difficult they are going to be. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted August 27, 2020 Author Share Posted August 27, 2020 (edited) I miss the Batman: Arkham games, Gotham Knights & Suicide Squad: KTJL Huh? What? I thought you just completed all the Batman: Arkham games within the last 7-8 months. You're correct. Batman: Arkham Knight (8.5) (for the record - I'd raise this up to a 9.25 if I could change the rules, but the council decides otherwise) Batman: Arkham Asylum (7.2) Batman: Arkham City (8.25) Recently, I haven't been able to stop thinking about Batman: Arkham Knight. Like, literally just sleeping and thinking "damn... that game was so awesome." It's disheartening to say the discussion end up from as plain as "there's tooooooo much bAtMObiLE!!!!!!!!!!!" to "the story was so obvious with Arkham Knight" to "the best one was Arkham Asylum" which makes me wonder if that person either A) Played it when it released which fair - the game was ground-breaking for it's time but how can you not believe the games systems and core gameplay elements haven't gotten better with each entry? Batman: Arkham Knight still looks GORGEOUS despite the fact it was released in 2015. Maybe a bit too grainy at times but an absolute technical marvel even now. Hell, even Arkham: City as someone who played it this past April with the Return to Arkham bundle it looked damn solid. I kept wondering why I missed these games despite the fact I platinumed Arkham Knight in (Nov. 2019), Arkham Asylum in (Jan. 2020), and Arkham City in (Apr. 2020). There are people who played these games at the time of their release and they've been starved for 5+ years. I sympathize with them, and I think the biggest reason is 1) The atmosphere these games pulled of is impeccable, 2) I LOVE the spectacle in terms of Hugo Strange and Scarecrow, and Joker in Arkham Knight taunting Batman the entire time with quips? Brilliant. 3) The combat is delicious casual fun. Once you learn the systems, the games become less about difficulty and "surviving" as Batman (which lemme say, I remember dying A LOT before mastering the combat system going for the Arkham: Knight DLC trophies) and the combat becomes more about pulling off cool combos, freezing a guy, shield takedown, electric blast, cape beatdown, environmental takedown, etc... it's all pulled off so well visually I don't get tired of it - even when other people say the loop is "played out" (I want to fight those people). But if you're a fan of Rocksteady / Batman... you do have some stuff on the horizon. Let's take a look at what was announced at DC FanDome. Gotham Knights Thoughts: First of all, this trailer is EXCELLENT. I mean, it's pretty much the bare minimum of what a trailer needs to pull off - but Batman announcing he's dead (even though, let's be honest he's mostly likely gone under cover as one of the Court of Owls talons or something like that - but I digress, still cool). But after the trailer played, and we got to see Robin, Batgirl, Nightwing, and Red Hood - the gameplay trailer released. Here that is... oh no... do you see what I see? The game is co-op. You can play with a partner as one of the other four characters. That's good right? No, not if you don't have any friends and play games always single player as I do. Do you know what else I see? Levels for enemies. Constant numbers popping when you're doing damage. Ugh.. it's RPG elements in my Batman game. They're Assassin's Creed'ing it. Of course, this is met with "it's good they're doing something new the Batman combat was played out and too easy." Do you know why Dragon Quest still uses the same combat system of turn-based despite the fact it's 11 games in? CAUSE IT'S GOOD. Change for the sake of change in all likelihood to satisfy some corporations pocket with GaaS loot system that requires battle passes and faster leveling possibilities sure is a change from the old system. I guess it's kind of like how getting syphilis and herpes is a "change of pace" for someone who was STD-free. Listen, we don't actually know if Gotham Knights is going to be plagued by that yet. It could be decent - but based on how the Mr. Freeze fight looked at the end there I'm not holding my breath. It's disheartening because while I haven't played Arkham: Origins which was made by WB Games Entertainment - I've heard people come around to it and say it's been underrated in recent years. I hope Gotham Knights reviews really well - I just think it's going to be a 6/10 product that went in a direction I could not have been less interested in. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Thoughts: Here's the trailer. I thought it was worse than Gotham Knights' but that's okay. Sadly, it's a shooter. Automatically makes it a virtual guarantee I won't play it since that simply does not interest me, but how is this game gonna perform? Eh... it seems like it's plagued by many of the same issues as Gotham Knights. Co-op with an emphasis on a more GaaS-like approach. No video game can be sacred anymore. It can't just be released as a full package and exist on it's own as a complete product. There has to be battle passes, DLC, new loot, new updates, put more time into it, don't you dare move on from this game - you have to keep playing it and make it your only game in order to properly "enjoy" all the content. That's a bit off subject, even as no gameplay was shown - I have faith that SS:KTJL is actually gonna review pretty well. I say this because I just have complete faith in Rocksteady to create a viable product built around spectacle and fundamental gameplay mechanics. They're too good to do it poorly - even if it's been done in a genre I don't care for. I truly mean that. I've seen some people get pissed and say "REALLY NO BATMAN?" Rocksteady as a studio has been working around-the-clock on "Batman centric video games" since spring 2007 - 2016/2017ish. That's over 9 years of being focused on one universe and one guy. They did a magnificent job with it - but I understand why that can exhaust creatively. They wanted to pave new terrain elsewhere - while still contributing to the Arkhamverse by announcing this game takes place in that universe. (Never mind that Deadshot pulled a reverse Michael Jackson). Based on the feeler plots I've seen out there, it seems like Brainiac will have taken control of the "good guys" like Superman turning them evil and it'll be up to the Suicide Squad to "save" the good guys - not actually killing them. This may be added by the fact that Batman has files that tells them how to defeat every super hero, including himself. That's a cool detail. My ultimate thoughts on this are "I prolly won't play it, I think it'll be good, high 7's - low 8's, and it'll be really beloved by some." 2022 is a far ways away though. On 8/25/2020 at 0:09 AM, Spaz said: I see you did all of Batman: Arkham City. Need to get back to that myself and finish off those DLC challenges. Just not really sure how difficult they are going to be. If you were able to platinum and 100% Arkham: Knight - you'll be fine Spaz. The DLC was the peak of trophies asking you to master the combat system in the Arkham series. I personally ended up doing the Robin/Nightwing sections last (I think honestly the Catwoman ones were the most annoying though? I can't 100% remember) But with a little aid from YouTube for some specific medals(don't just watch Batman: Arkham Videos, that guy is nuts, other videos provide more reasonable and routes you're able to follow) But yea - you platinumed Super Meat Boy. No game that I ever platinum will likely be "beyond your ability". Edited August 27, 2020 by realm722 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJ_Radio Posted August 27, 2020 Share Posted August 27, 2020 3 minutes ago, realm722 said: If you were able to platinum and 100% Arkham: Knight - you'll be fine Spaz. The DLC was the peak of trophies asking you to master the combat system in the Arkham series. I personally ended up doing the Robin/Nightwing sections last (I think honestly the Catwoman ones were the most annoying though? I can't 100% remember) But with a little aid from YouTube for some specific medals(don't just watch Batman: Arkham Videos, that guy is nuts, other videos provide more reasonable and routes you're able to follow) But yea - you platinumed Super Meat Boy. No game that I ever platinum will likely be "beyond your ability". Oh god. If you didn't watch Top of the World (Extreme) - Batman on the Batman: Arkham Videos, you need to watch it. Guy is insane, he basically went inside the building doing a bunch of crazy shit that I couldn't hope to match anytime soon. Watched a guy who was a lot slower, I eventually got it done. I'll get those trophies eventually, I was just tired of repeating the predator challenges with Batman. I can do the combat challenges no problem, but the predator challenges? Ugh, don't like them. Your sports platinums are great, though I definitely see why you gave up on some of them. I was going to get MLB 19 the Show thru PS Plus, but then they had to throw in that terrible Diamond Dynasty trophy that makes the platinum a sub 1 percent. Why did you do that San Diego Studios, why? I'm actually thinking of picking up MLB 20 the Show when it gets a price decease. I must say this has been thus far the worst year I have ever witnessed in my life in baseball. Closing down the baseball season due to COVID-19, then opening it up when people are still getting inflicted. *sigh* I miss my sports. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted August 30, 2020 Author Share Posted August 30, 2020 (edited) Game: Valkyria Chronicles Analysis: I bought Valkyria Chronicles for $7.99 back in late June 2020. It's Anime World War 2. What a premise! Where should I even begin with this? STORY/CHARACTERS - You play as Welkin Gunther, this somewhat dorky innocent nature boy who's extremely kind-hearted and does what he can to support those around him. Initially I was put off by his voice actor since it felt really ridiculous that THIS kid at 24 years of age(yes his father was a former great military general, that's n-e-p-o-t-i-s-m folks) was being asked to lead a Squad 7 Militia but his naivety as a protagonist got more endearing as the game went on. Meanwhile, in one of the opening scenes you meet Alicia Melchiott, a 19-year old woman who works at a bakery and becomes a scout for Galilea, your country that tends to take no sides when warring nations go against one another is now being invaded by the East European Imperial Alliance, aka, the bad guys. Basically - think Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact, etc.. they're the bad guys! The villain in this game kinda sucks. Prince Maximillian is under-cooked, he's a bad dude who wants things/resources for his land, and is willing to initiate war crimes to do so. There are some side plots involving the Darcsens (kinda sounds like dark skins?), who are exploited, forced into concentration camps, blamed, persecuted, murdered. You have a number of Darcsens in your regiment including your adoptive little sister, Isara. I consider everyone reading this intelligent enough to make the necessary allegory to who this is referencing in real life. What makes this conundrum interesting is the fact that many of the members of your own squad, hate Darcsens, including a prominent character in Rosie who's a Shocktrooper who will straight up hate on your little sister Isara, cuz, she's a Darcsen. That's pretty neat that they were willing to make it plainly evident that while you're leading this militia, not everybody is kumbaya with each other and loves one another. Largo is the big BRO/grandpa of the squad and is a lancer, he's experienced with war from the 1st Europa War. Finally you have Captain Varrot who's an awesome superior to Welkin in terms of directing him, I really dig her character. Everything I've laid out thus far sounds pretty decent, and it is... but this is anime so let's get to the nonsense. There are a people known as the Valkyur's who straight up merked the Darcsens and conquered Europa. Their lineage and ancient power was seemingly lost, but surprise - the Imperials have a woman by the name of Selvaria who's a Valkyria and she destroys everything in her path. How are you possibly gonna win the war when they have her? Oh snap - guess what, your waifu is ALSO a Valkyria. Do ya get the name of the game yet? Alicia is Valkyria! She pwns Selvaria, and then y'all proceed to wreck the Empire time and time again since the odds are even now. Eventually of course it looks like Maximillian is gonna win but thankfully Vyse can take 2,000 bullets to the face and one-shot the guy in 1 turn. Thanks Vyse! Overall thoughts on the story? I liked the smaller story beats far more than the over-arching war conflict. Stuff like disputes between members of the regiment early on involving Rosie, the interactions with Varrot and her being in conflict with the douche superiors that basically dismiss your militia as fodder for the opposing military to chew through. When you get to the giant anime battles involving Valkyur and Maxmillian riding in ons his inter galatic tank, or his giant blue spear with a force field, your start to lose me. Obviously if you're into that, good for you. I will say I greatly enjoyed the story more when it was played through proper cutscenes as when the game is in "storybook" mode, while it's all voice acted, having to click through each line at a steady rhythm so the narration doesn't slow to a crawl is kinda annoying. Final point on the story is - DAMN I wondered why all the Valkyria were women, and then I realized now we know where they store their power. GAMEPLAY - I have never played a game with Valkyria Chronicles gameplay. It's a Strategy-Action RPG. You have a number of units on the terrain, you can move them around, and it's somewhat turn based given the fact you can only move a certain distance depending upon the unit and typically only attack once per each command point. It takes 1 command point to move a scout/shocktrooper/lancer/engineer/sniper and 2 command points to move tanks. The interesting thing though is opposing enemies can fire on you as you move past them, basically meaning that cover and being noticed is vital as they will wear down your health in seconds if you're not carefully protecting them. The same applies for your units, if you position your guys in positions where they can openly fire on the enemy during their turn, you can do damage to them as well. It's a bit jarring when you first play it since you can just be jaunting about and all of a sudden your scout gets destroyed by 2 hidden shocktroopers and now you have to rush to save him - but I liked it as the game went on, always giving you something to worry about. That being said, the games "ranking" system sucks. I got strictly C's and D's for the majority of my playthrough. Why? The ONLY thing that matters is finishing as quickly as possible. Forget about taking down the enemy, forget about preventing your own guys from being downed, all that matters is completing the objective in as few turns as possible. What does this mean? This means I had the game somewhat ruined for me by discovering Scouts are the most OP unit in the entire game. I won't lie, I thought scouts/engineers were trash. How is 5 piss diddly shots from a weak weapon gonna do me any good? I relied upon shocktroopers, lancers for tank damage (I did not realize how many tanks there would be), and always 1-2 snipers for that long range damage. Then I discovered, oh snap, ORDERS BY WELKIN ARE SO BROKEN. I did not even touch orders for the first 12-14 chapters. I thought they would given minimal, negligent boosts that weren't worth bothering with. Instead, they turn scouts(and specifically Alicia) into one-many army's that even Batman would envy. This is where I must present the single simplest statement to describe this game to anybody who doesn't know anything about it. Belgian waffle girl wins entire war by herself and as funny as that is (and lemme tell you, it is really damn funny to think this one baker lady is winning every battle by herself suppressing an onslaught of enemy warfare as they look on helplessly), it did kinda suck to see that the way I had been playing for the first 15-20 hours was "the wrong" way. I seriously struggled on a lot of missions early on. The one where you Maxmillian is in his tank in the Barious desert? I needed all 19 turns until I somehow squeezed out the victory before Selvaria absolutely dusted me. The Escape from Forest Snare was a great detour, initially saving the captured Cordelia was a long difficult process for me until Jane clutched out a victory single-handedly by herself shooting down the armored car. Hell, Showdown at Naggiar with me purposefully setting up my lancers to wreck the tanks right as they spawned had me giggling with my "cleverness"... and it all kinda gets erased by the OP orders on scouts. If you have the power to control yourself, not care about A-ranks on your 1st playthrough and just play the game "normally" not knowing this - you'll have a fun challenging time as I did. My only other complaints in regards to gameplay are the fact that I wish the members of your squad had more screen time, as in, Fire Emblem: Three Houses-esque focus. I got really excited when I recruited all my initial members, I specifically digged Marina, Coby, Edy, Freesia, Hannes, and Cherry but the fact you only get their intros and some dialogue when they're running around kinda sucks. They're never involved in the story. Yes, it's cool that have their own personality traits (some hate Darcsens, some love dudes, hate dudes, fancies women, pollen allergies, etc..) but without any Welkin-to-them interaction there was never that connection like when I played FE:TH. Granted, this game is big enough as is but having that added to it given how much I love a game like Persona 5 with your party interactions would have been really awesome and added to the replayability of getting to know each character and seeing them mingle as opposed to just reading a paragraph on them in the "personnel" tab. Let's end on some compliments though. 1) The differentiating between headshots/normal body hits is cool. 2) The tank is well-designed and feels hefty, and the mortar/Isara smoke bombs are cool additions as the game progresses. 3) Each unit legitimately has their strengths and weaknesses, even engineers who I thought would be useless can re-stock lancers and let them shoot more than just once per turn once you've used them up, which save me greatly in the Barious Desert Maxmillian mission. EXTRA STUFF - Wow this game had a lot of effort put into it man. It's a game from 2008 and it has everything you need for grinding pleasure in the skirmishes if the game is too difficult, I dabbled slightly here during my early chapters but never too much. The lengthy glossary, weapon descriptions, and personnel tabs. The Ellet reporter lady who you can go to and buy extra reports/missions on, like learning about Varrot's background in the 1st War, how she lost her lover, wanted revenge, and ends up loving Largo. The goofy adorable fan service found in the vacation beach trip (ayyyy Alicia). Buying all the upgrades for your crew and tank. I dig the storybook that lets you see specific cutscenes if you want to review something again and not be forced to play through the whole level again. The soundtrack is very grand and orchestral. I think the game has aged beautifully with the cell water colored aesthetic, sometimes the specific facial features/speaking don't come out great but it's very pleasing on the eyes for a game that's so heavily war-focused. TROPHIES - This game will demand everything out of you trophy wise. But it's not difficult whatsoever. My recommendation is rather than trying to figure out everything you have to do on a 1st playthrough, play the game casually/normally without worrying about any trophies whatsoever. Just play it and enjoy it. Then the 2nd playthrough you can start getting down to the nitty gritty. I recommend getting the ZM-Kar8 for Alicia on the 1st DLC Skirmish - this will helpfully in our lovely girls conquering of an entire Empire. After that, I'd honestly start going through each mission again, figuring out where the "Ace" enemies are (to get their weapons), and just knowing that by now Alicia will be able to single-handedly almost always either 1) Run to the objective or 2) Be boosted with Caution, Awaken Potential, Attack Boost, Defense Boost, etc... to take down whatever "Ace" necessary and win. The first few levels can almost always be won in 1-2 turns. On a lengthier one, look up the strategy and you'll be fine. For grinding 1k kills please watch this video. You can only attempt it after beating the game the 1st time and you'll need some somewhat buffed guys in order to complete it, but it makes reaching that number a breeze once you know what you're doing. Besides that it's all smooth sailing. Make sure you get all the distinct royal weapons from Cordelia, you will have a stupid amount of experience/ducats to not even spend money on while doing this so don't worry about those whatsoever. All in all, it took me just 6 days and 13 hours(36 hours play time) in order to achieve this 10.13% rarity platinum, and may I say, it is a gorgeous platinum image. IN CONCLUSION - I'm glad I played Valkyria Chronicles. The reason I bought it is because of the good things I had heard people say about it in various forums, and I can comfortably say it's a unique gaming experience. That being said, I do have to admit this game falls into that Hollow Knight / Celeste category of games for me being... I in all likelihood don't love this game nearly as much as the people who really love this game do. I really do feel like a smaller cast of "side" characters and trimming the roster down to 25-30 but making them have unique cutscenes/small story beats would have been huge. Hell, there's 0 YouTube Videos ranking the best Valkyria Chronicles squad members. That's a goof-up. Also, I can't help but feel the fact that Scouts break the game that much damages it for me personally knowing I can't help but think while playing "just do this and it's ez gg Alicia is your overlord now bye bye". Even without that, I can comfortably say I have no intention of playing Valkyria Chronicles 4. I consider this like a unique meal, I had my share, my fun, I'm full - and I'm good. I don't need anymore, and now I understand where the admiration with this game comes from. Just like Welkin and Alicia after the war I'm riding off into the sunset to enjoy peaceful life in new pastures. Thank you for your time, Gallia. Panda Score: 7.5 / 10 Edited January 18, 2023 by realm722 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted September 1, 2020 Author Share Posted September 1, 2020 (edited) Game: Cel Damage HD Analysis: What a surprisingly delightful little game! I bought Cel Damage HD for $2.99 back in late June 2020. The only thing I knew about this game going in is that it was a childhood favorite of many who played it originally on the Playstation 2, Xbox, or Gamecube. The original release was all the way back in 2001! It was a niche title and ultimately didn't sale very well, as the studio closed before they were able to release a sequel but I thought it was pretty neat it was available now for consumers on modern platforms. All I needed to pull the trigger was knowing it was cheap, short, and had a fairly decent 100% completion rate. Playing it initially on Smack Attack mode was pretty alright, but I thought all you could do was spam your normal attack(I played as Violet so just spamming soccer balls essentially) with the occasional power-up item. Thankfully looking at the trophies I discovered you can actually launch your car in extreme directions at a whim with the right analog stick. That's where the fun in this game is found. Moving ridiculously quickly springing yourself forwards and to the sides to pick up momentum. This is best expressed in the other two modes, Flag Relay and Gate Relay. The game is just satisfying and intuitive to try and get the right angles to finish the objective as quickly as possible. The matches only lasts around 2-4 minutes on the lowest objective (300 attack score, 10 flags, or 8 laps). It's a wonderful palette cleanser and simple mindless fun that has enough engagement to it that never makes it feel like a slog. I was very happy with myself when I managed to complete it in just 2 hours and 33 minutes to achieve the 17.19% 100% completion rate. Having played it I absolutely understand why this is a fan favorite for many who played it in their childhood - likely with siblings adding to the chaos. Solid recommendation from me if you can grab it on sale and want a decent 100% to add to your catalogue. Panda Score: 6.6 / 10 Edited January 18, 2023 by realm722 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted September 8, 2020 Author Share Posted September 8, 2020 (edited) Game: 88 Heroes Analysis: I bought 88 Heroes for $2.99 in late August 2020. So this is a game that I've actually had my eye on for awhile to go on sale. The reason being I really liked YouTuber Cornshaq's review on it. It just looked like a different sorta game that you could pick up for cheap and enjoy, and I've gotta say, for 3 bucks it's a pretty damn solid deal. It's a platformer that is obsessed with the number 88. There are 88 heroes (if you get hit by anything, an enemy, a laser, or falling into a pit, you die and that character is gone for good unless you earn enough coins through the levels to revive them). The heroes are pretty cool in terms of how distinct they are. A number of them deal damage, many don't, some are small and floaty, others are big and a slog to move around, there are some cool unique ones like Miss Fortune where you have a random 50% chance to either die or go straight to the end of the level, Mighty Mite who's hitbox is virtually 0 as you're basically a mosquito, and Bat-Box which makes the game move at 1 frame each time you move 1 box. A decent number of them completely suck (I'm talking about you An Delay Man who lags when you run). It's a cute novelty for a game, and your goal is to progress through all 88 levels, with their being 4 zones, 21 levels for each zone, and a boss at the end of each one. The boss tends to be a complete push over since they have to be beatable with any hero so the patterns are 1-note and repetitive but that's alright, the normal levels themselves are hard enough. Lemme say - this game is just a cool concept. The developers are Bitmap Bureau, and considering this is a 2-man crew out of the United Kingdom, they did a good job with this making a decent fun trolly(in a good way) platformer good for a few laughs. In terms of trophies, a lot of the easier ones will pop right away within your first hour of playing. For me, the biggest "grind" was beating the game with at least 16 heroes level in the 88 mode. I'll admit, I used the cloud save loophole since man I don't know how you could pull that off without doing so, at least not without practicing it multiple times due to the fact there simply is a large amount of wack heroes that are useless for later levels. It added to the tedium, but the levels are so quick that if you can into a rhythm you can blaze through it. Once you do that, use Miss Fortune to quickly fly through Magnificent 8 and Solo Mode (she really is the MVP of this game), and then to grind the 888 enemies destroyed, choose Digi-Punch and get to Level 28, destroy all the piranha plants, and finally in order to achieve the 888 deaths use Deiter Nate and click the square button infinitely. Within a reasonable amount of time, you'll have achieved your 9.10% rarity platinum, and I managed mine in 4 days and 6 hours. Honestly - one of the biggest compliments I also want to give this game is it has really fast menus which is a greta bonus (Cel Damage HD had fast ones too!), and you don't really notice it until you play a game like Children of Morta that's so unusually slow in that department. All in all, if you like platformers, get this game when it's on sale! The sub < 10% platinum is also a nice enticing bonus. Panda Score: 6.5 / 10 Edited January 18, 2023 by realm722 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJ_Radio Posted September 8, 2020 Share Posted September 8, 2020 I've been following Cornshaq for about five years now. Good guy, gives honest ratings and not crap ones like what IGN throws out. Love the Play It Through playthroughs he does on old NES games. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted September 15, 2020 Author Share Posted September 15, 2020 Game: Beholder 2 Analysis: Boy am I hyped for this one! I bought Beholder 2 for $5.99 back in late August 2020 after having platinumed and reviewed the original in early August. Spoiler-Free Review: I love these games. I don't "love, love" them like I do say a Dead Cells, Persona 5, or Stardew Valley. To be quite frank, the moment to moment gameplay isn't interesting enough to grab and capture me in that way. But if you are someone, who loves game "atmospheres", game worlds, game "vibes", or just are looking for something different and don't mind some dark satire in a Cold War-esque environment - YOU NEED TO PLAY THIS GAME. I think it's better than the original, and does a magnificent job of expanding upon everything. I think it's sometimes telling when a game developer chooses to make a sequel, simply because their 1st game was unusually successful and a sequel virtually guarantees avoiding a flop - as opposed to starting a brand new IP. Whereas when a game developer chooses a sequel, because they genuinely want to expand on what they made in the 1st game. Beholder 2 is an example in the later - they planted seeds in the original of what they wanted to do when they first released and published it in 2016, and a few years later, in late 2018, they released this behemoth with so much more expanded upon it. Something else that I think contributes to my enjoyment is the fact that these games are so barely talked about. I'll be perfectly honest, I had never heard even one peep about them other than seeing Beholder: Complete Edition on sale on PSPrices. I bought it, was shocked by how much I enjoyed it, and went back for more when the sequel went on sale. Videos about this game on YouTube do well since they're fantastic for quick jokes and there's many unique things you can do to create funny moments. This 2nd game doesn't even have 200 owners on PSNProfiles, if anything, just check this game out and give it a whirl when it's ons ale for $5 - you may be surprised by how much you enjoy it. (SPOILERS BELOW I HAVE A LOT I WANT TO WRITE ABOUT REGARDING THIS GAME) You play as Evan Redgrave. Your father was a powerful man in the ministry, and he's just fallen out of the window several stories to his death out of the very same government building you will now be working at, trying to climb the ranks of. Your typical menial daily labor on each level is a bit of a bore - but I think even the wonderful developers at Warm Lamp Games know that. At Level 1, you process peoples requests/complaints/denunciations/information dumps and have to catalogue them correctly. On Level 12, you take those processed forms and decide what must be done, rejecting them, fining people, arresting them, or sending them to a firing squad. Finally, on Level 25, you take part in processing clones that are being created by the government and giving them specific personality traits for each job that there is a need for. You have to do 100 of these on each level in order to gain a silver trophy for each one, so that adds to the "grind", but consider it your "zone-out" time where you can pop on a YouTube video and do the task as painlessly as possible. The game knows that these tasks themselves aren't super engaging, there's no clock like in Papers, Please to make you move quickly or give a sense of urgency. You just clock in and do it as an "easy" if boring way to gain money/authority. Of course, this isn't the only way you can increase your sphere of influence. In order to move up the ranks, you need to eliminate your co-workers by either... finding untoward behavior in their lives, or mercifully helping them in their personal lives and getting them the hell out of working in the Ministry. What does this imply? Take a look below. Your Co-Workers in Beholder 2 * Marco Legrand - A rich boy with a rich daddy, he's a complete d-bag, but if you play your cards right you can get him decapitated. * Emma Hazer - The flirt of the office, single mom with 2 kids. You can get her to give up her kids, have sex with her, get an STD, and make her drug dependent till death. * Peter Dong - The dweeb of the office who likes Emma, hates Marco, if you prank him enough you can drive him to shooting up the workplace. I'm not kidding. * John Smith - You'll end up discovering he's in Witness Protection Program since he sold out the mafia. His real names Fat Tony. You can give him a new lease on life. * Gloria Melfi - Her son died in a car accident ages ago, and her poor soul thinks you're her old son at times... that's a vulnerability if I've ever seen one! * Hank Wright - He's an alcoholic who's been depressed since his brother has gone missing mysteriously... (he's been tortured in a dungeon by your boss!) * Stephen Dawking - A genius chubby man who wants to honestly do the good thing... that sounds like trying to under-mine our glorious Wise Leader if anything * Horatio Newport - A standoffish jerk who doesn't engage you since he thinks you're below him intellectually. May be far, he can actually time travel. * Marie Curie - You can't understand her at first, but later you discover she's being abused by her security officer and you need to rescue her (or.... not) Did that capture your attention? Because the way you get in good with these co-workers is pretty humorous. Sneaking into their work areas when they're not in and hacking their computers / searching their desks. You can watch their favorite TV shows and discuss them to become friends with them. It's quite good fun. How about the bosses on each floor? Your Bosses in Beholder 2 * Pete Ferguson - A debaucherous jerk who the one and only thing he will ever care about is money. He's generally a repugnant individual - but the way you can dirt on him is by capturing video of him being unwieldily at one of his infamous work office party / orgies. How wild? You set people on fire, women are censored blurs in cages, there was a lady getting two-timed in the background in one of the sections, and it's ultimately how you can get him eliminated from his position. * Albert DeSalvo - A calm man at first.... and then you discover that he has a torture fetish. He just gets a huge kick out of using torture devices from across the decades of history to play with his prey. How so? Well - he was torturing one of your co-workers brothers. He also literally killed children in the heart of the Wise Leader, showing violence and death specifically against children is prohibited so the game censored it - but it was there. At the end of the level, you are given the choice between saving 20+ adults in a room or 1 small girl. If you save one, the other dies. If you save the girl, the room with 20+ people has them all burned alive. If you save the 20+ adults, the small girl is escorted away by a government official, the door closes, and you hear her shrieking. Easily the most horrendous of the bunch, at least in my mind - he has a frigging paper shredder for people on his floor if they don't hit their quotas! * Isaac Weinberg - A scientist who's making himself to be god to the clones he is creating. The clone subject? Carl Stein! Yes - this is such a cool callback to the original and I absolutely loved it. After your time as an apartment manager at Khrusvice 6, your body was used to create all these clones and your job as Evan by Isaac is to find your weakness. You investigate how the lives of your kids (Patrick and Martha) as well as your wife (Anna) ended. They all ended up dying. Isaac's a bad evil genius dude who ultimately has the whole universe becomes mindlessly drones to create clones, but at least he had a plan when creating his vision! So yeah... that's really what I wanted to cover regarding this game. The way it's story unfolds and becomes gradually more and more "out-there" is a ton of fun. One of the best moments in the entire game for me was a subtle one. After a day at work, I returned home to my apartment, and my landlord was snooping through my things. This is exactly what you did in the original Beholder, but now you were on the other side. It's such a gorgeous small detail but it absolutely makes you understand the "violated" feeling you'd get when something was just snooping through your things. The fact it only happened once also contributed to it's uniqueness. I enjoyed Beholder 2. I say that even as it didn't hit me at the best time (I had disinterest playing games the past week due to tiredness, lots of sports going on with Miami Heat in ECF vs Boston, Marlins playoff push (24-21), and Dolphins season starting up). It's endings are wide and vast - depending on how many Heimdall codes you were able to find from your father. The ultimate goal being giving people free will to do what they please and make their own choices, without an authoritarian government constantly telling them what to do and how to feel. I think that's a nice message. Ultimately, I think what makes me really enjoy this series is it's just so different from everything else out there. It's not a platformer, it's not a puzzler, it doesn't have waifus or turn based combat... it's putting you in a dark world and asking you to make the most of it and understand what the hell is going on. I think that's just fantastic. Whatever Warm Lamp Games makes next, I will be right there with them to support it! Panda Score: 7.4 / 10 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted October 2, 2020 Author Share Posted October 2, 2020 Game: Risk of Rain 2 Analysis: I bought the physical edition of Risk of Rain 2 for $14.99 back in late July 2020. This is not going to be a review of ROR2, but rather a man gushing about it. Risk of Rain 2 is.... The Video Game Players Video Game™. What the hell does that mean? That means this game was designed to be broken. In the absolute greatest, most magnificent, glorious way possible. This is a game that asks you to break it, and when you do, it swiftly decides to deliver the most fervent kick to the nuts in an attempt to stop you. It is a rogue-lite that has fun with RNG and has a brilliant diverse amount of items that offer a multitude of ridiculous play styles. For the record, I actually played and 100% completed the original Risk of Rain back in late 2018! I had a super fun time playing it, and even mention in the post that wish the game had a platinum that demanded more of you in order to keep playing. It was such a wonderful time returning to this game and seeing all the items and enemies from the original game go from 2D to 3D. You have your basic Beetle and Leumurian's, rising to the kamikaze Jellyfish, to Imps, the Stone Golem's, annoying Wisp's, to some of the absolute nightmare bosses from Magma Worms that are a pain to hit - Wandering Vagrant's when they do that pulsating attack that covers the entire map and takes half your health - to the Scavenger which if you are unlucky, can get together a combination of items that make it completely unkillable with how quickly it heals. This happened to me personally on a Stage 10 run when I was trying for the 20 stages trophy and it eventually one-shot me despite the fact I had north of 20 teddy bears. Speaking of Teddy Bear's, lemme rank you all my personal favorite items in the game. RealM722's Favorite Items in Risk of Rain 2: * Tougher Times - 15% chance to block incoming damage completely? Hell yea brother, give me 25 of those! * Soldier's Syringe - I mained Commando since... he's the default? This game didn't challenge me to learn other characters ala Children of Morta so syringe for days! * Paul's Goat Hoof - Increases movement speed by 14% is just sick to get your speed up incrementally * Len's-Maker's Glasses - 10% chance to critically strike, get 10 of these and guarantee double damage * Energy Drink - Increases sprint speed by 30%, you won't always be sprinting but for covering chests once OP is so much fun * Backup Magazine - Add +1 charge of your secondary skill, I love spamming my L2 and this makes that so easy * Hopoo Feather - Gain +1 jump, Once you get 3-4 of these you're basically able to traverse everywhere on any map * Infusion - Killing an enemy adds +1 health, up to 100 stack - it's fun to get a ridiculous amount of health at 5-6k+ by getting a bunch of these * Old Guillotine - Instantly kill Elite monsters below 20% health, one of the best items in the entire game * Ukulele - 25% chance to chain lightning for 80% damage to multiple enemies, the most iconic item to the Risk of Rain franchise, GOAT item The randomness of the game makes it extremely fun to replay, hell, for this past week from Tuesday - Friday I was having fun playing for hours and even when I stopped playing, I wanted to get another run in - that's the sign of a phenomenal game making you want to come back for more. The gameplay is so damn fun. Commando is a very basic, casual play-style with firing a gun and sliding about, but there's Huntress(super squishy mobile), Engineer(place turrets and heal), Artificer(can hover), Mercenery(melee for days and I frames), Rex(uses HP, rekts people), Loader(slow but powerful), and Acrid(monster melee-range hybrid) - I'm a filthy casual, but there's so much diversity to be offered here. Other than the fun enemies and fantastically diverse amount of items - the amount of secrets and unlockables in this game can have you playing for 80+ hours. I only unlocked a fraction of what was necessary due to that being all the game was really asking from me, but this can easily become a 1000+ hour game if you fall completely in love with it - plus the 1.0 update is yet to come to consoles just yet. My personal experience of playing early on had me dying so much at the beginning, with the furthest I achieved being Stage 5... the reason being that I was playing on Rainstorm without even realizing it - with the recommendation being playing on Drizzle to start out. After making that switch, I began to easily work my way through the game and begin to loop. I achieved a number of trophies naturally, including the stay alive for 30+ minutes that I thought was initially glitched for me(did it multiple times, didn't pop, popped randomly on a run in the 39th minute). I started trying to go for the 20+ stages trophy since I figured I would unlock a lot of the other ones with this method, but dammit no matter how hard I tried I simply kept dying in that stage 12-14 range when my damage output just wasn't enough to keep up with the enemy levels on AHAHAHAHA difficulty. Thus, I decided to turn to the Risk of Rain 2 Discord! Yes, I ventured into multiplayer... and lemme say, I had fun with 2 guys I each played with! The first one being at Soap_Taste_Okay, a super chill dude who's always relatively new to the game and we just had a fun time playing together and learning stuff and secrets about the game. He helped me with - "Her Concepts", "Naturopath", "Death Do Us Part", "[REDCATED]". and "The Demons and the Crabs" - as well as unlocking Rex. In exchange, I helped him earn all of those and with the Command Artifact unlocked, we managed to OP stomp our way to stage 20 even after I had done it solo with the Command Artifact for him to get that achievement to unlock. Another guy who helped me was SharkSparton, kinda intense dude who was a veteran at the game, had us playing friggin' Monsoon difficulty from the start and it led to me dying a lot, him carrying, until he inevitably died because duh - it's Monsoon difficulty with no artifacts, the furthest us getting until Stage 14 when he... kinda rage quit the party? It's aight, he helped me unlock Acrid with the Void section as well as with learning more about the game which I appreciated. I picked up the rest of my trophies on my own, with the most difficult being killing an Elite Boss on Monsoon Difficulty being achieved by cheesing it with having Artifact of Honor and Artifact of Glass enabled at the same time. You die in one hit, but eventually I got a lucky run in against an Elite Queen Beetle and managed to kill her 1 second before she killed me and got the rarest trophy to unlock. If you're having any trouble with getting the game down or keep dying a lot and want to learn some good tips, I strongly recommend checking out a ROR2 YouTuber by the name of Woolie. Great calm smooth voice and knows every nook and cranny there is to know about. This game is glorious. I really want to reiterate that. It embodies everything special about the rogue-lite genre and the dedicated fandom and community it has is a result of that. Hopoo Games is a studio of less than 5 people, yet the original co-founders (Duncan Drummond and Paul Morse) made something incredible and have sculpted it into this masterclass of a video game in Risk of Rain 2. My only complaints are this - somehow, the same as the original. 1) I wish the trophies had been a little bit harder to keep me playing longer and 2) I wish the game had asked me to learn to play the other characters. I think not forcing a 20 stage Monsoon run is cool, and the fact you can manipulate Artifacts is fun as well - but asking me to learn at least a basic trophy or two with other characters rather than having so many super easy trophies would have made the one change I'd make. I think demanding 100% full completion would have led to this game being a sub < 5% platinum, and instead I managed to achieve it in 1 week and 6 days, achieving a 12.45% platinum rarity! I'm thrilled I bought the physical edition as this will add to my collection of rogue-lites I will forever treasure. Now with Clear Skies and broad horizons, let's see what game I'll conquer next. Panda Score: 8.8 / 10 (I mulled over giving it a 9/10 so much - but since it didn't force me to truly master the mechanics, couldn't give it the nod) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted October 2, 2020 Author Share Posted October 2, 2020 (edited) Game: inFamous First Light Analysis: I bought inFamous First Light for $7.99 back in late August 2020. It is my 1st time playing a game in the inFamous series. and I've gotta be honest with y'all, this game sure as hell does not have me motivated to try another one. Perhaps that may be a bit harsh - I notice according to PSPrices this game was released in September 2014 which which means it was one of the first new wave of games to hit the Playstation 4, but man there's so little to offer here. I know, I know - it's supposed to be a "minor story in the inFamous universe", think Uncharted: Lost Legacy to the Uncharted series or what the Miles Morales game is supposed to be in comparison to Spider-Man - but woof. First of all, the main lady - I've gotta be honest, I finished the game a few days ago and I don't remember her name. The only things I really remember are the fact that she and her brother were doing some shady business, her brother gets kidnapped by some even shadier dude from Texas(who then blackmails... Lucy?(is her name Lucy?) into doing his dirty work, and they're also fighting the "Akurans" or Russians, there's some "D.U.P." officers who specialize in being conduits to fight these conduits with their magical traversal powers... and she ends up killing her brother accidentally because she thought he was an enemy. I just looked up her name after writing that! Right, her name was Fetch. What an awful name. Stop trying to make it happen, Sucker Punch. So the story had me completely disengaged - I think the idea of a close sibling relationship being explored would be cool since it's relatively untouched terrain in terms of video game stories, but nothing here makes me think that premise was handled very well. What about the core mechanics and gameplay itself? The best way I can summarize it is... inFamous First Light is.... Control: Trashcan Edition I haven't even played Control. But I have seen Joseph Anderson play it! It is crazy to me how much playing this game reminded me of some moments while watching him play Control. Initially it was a bit strange for me the way you can never-endingly dash everywhere by holding the "O" button. The combat includes either 1) melee where you endlessly beat your opponents with your fists or 2) holding L2 and firing conduit bolts at their weakpoints to straight merk them. In the main gameplay story sections, nothing here is very fun or challenging. You have crappy ride on top of a van and defend the vehicle sections. You have an end of the game snow area where you plow through everybody that doesn't offer much. It all just feels so blah. Hell, the "side quests" in this game are even worse. There's literally 3 types. 1), Quick chase after a spinning globe races that are never any challenge, 2) Paint graffiti which involves the crappy motion controls like it's 2008 and we're playing the Nintendo Wii all over again and 3) Find and kill a drone by using it's camera to find where it is (honestly, kinda neat concept but c'mon). The "world" of Seattle looks solid all-around but they don't do anything memorable with it or have signature landmarks. This is one of the crappiest "Super Hero" games there is and makes me respect what Batman(Rocksteady) and Spider-Man's(Insomniac) developers produced by comparison. This game was looking well on it's way to being a "5.0 grade" game for me - which a shockingly small amount of games I play land in... but it was saved single-handedly by it's Arena Mode Challenges. This is where the game shined for me! The challenges were actually a proper bit difficult. Specifically, surviving through 30 waves on "Gamma Survival" was properly difficult and took me working the mechanics in order to properly beat it. Those demons ain't no joke. If you weren't constantly moving or renewing your neon, you would get destroyed and have to restart from the top. Easily my favorite and most enjoyable parts of the game, it's where the slow-mo while shooting and aiming for weak-points reminded me the most of Control, and yea - this game's rating got saved because of it. All in all, it took me 3 days and 5 hours in order to achieve this 22.29% platinum rarity! Panda Score: 6 / 10 Edited October 2, 2020 by realm722 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJ_Radio Posted October 3, 2020 Share Posted October 3, 2020 You jumped on inFamous pretty late. I think you're going to like inFamous: Second Son more. Delsin isn't as memorable as Cole Phelps was but he's got a bit of a quirky style to him. Sucker Punch nailed down the Pacific Northwest atmosphere wonderfully, good music, fluid gameplay. My only real complaint is the open world is nothing great anymore, considering that this is an early PS4 exclusive, it doesn't stand out much compared to what the later PS4 exclusives have given us. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted October 7, 2020 Author Share Posted October 7, 2020 Game: Journey Analysis: I got Journey for Free in late April 2020 when Sony gifted it away to all users due to the Quarantine / COVID-19 Outbreak. Journey is one of those games that received critically acclaim back in 2012, towards the end of the Playstation 3's life cycle. It then came to PS4 in 2015 and has joined even more platforms as recently as 2019. I've gotta be honest, I've always heard really great things about Journey - I knew you traveled around various landscapes but to be honest, didn't know much more about it. All I knew was that it was one of those artsy indie video games, and for whatever reason, never bothered to even see a playthrough of it on YouTube like I've done for oh so many other games. The reason why I put it off for so long even after getting it was I looked at the trophies and saw multi-player was necessary. But finally now I said screw it, lemme give it a shot - and DAMN this game is good and I understand all of the love for it. I really, really want to know if people knew at the games release about the concept of other players randomly joining your game and being able to play the game with them. Because even as I had a hint of what was to come - it was so cool running into another scarf fella as I bounced around the world completing the simple puzzles and action sequences. Some of them didn't keep up with me, but there was one I had while going back for a collectible and he helped me all the way to the end of the game and damn it has such a powerful effect. That feeling of not wanting to get lost in the world and lose them - thinking you may never find them again. The only interactions being a flutter and musical chime - but yet they tell so much as you play it's so much better than the normal speaking / typing in so many other co-op games. A particularly memorable sequence for me was when we were on one of the final stretches on the mountain, I was trying to trek forward while he was staying inside one of the cupboards underneath trying to avoid the vision of the Guardian. On my screen, I didn't see him - so I kept insisting on him to get moving, went ahead, he finally went, and then I saw his guy get PLOWED across the snow and lose a bunch of his scarf. I ran over to give him a pick-me-up, and then the Guardian TOOK ME OUT when I didn't even see him on my screen. We both ran into the mountain crevice and proceeded but it was such an awesome moment, and towards the end of the climb to the summit he waited up for me as we crossed on over to complete the game. If you haven't tried Journey, and can't for whatever reason - this video does a fantastic job summarizing it. If you have played Journey and want something extra, check out this video by Polygon with the composer, Austin Wintory and how he came up with the amazing final score. As I said, I 1000% get all the love this game got now having played it. In terms of trophies, there's nothing at all tricky here. In terms of individual levels, they're so quick and easily re-playable once you complete the game that you shouldn't stress doing them all on your 1st go-around. Completing the bridge without it having fully solved is easy with the rechargeable white robe. Finding all the unique glowing symbols is also easy with a guide. The most time dependent trophies for me were "Companion" but I was easily able to bang it out with the amazing help of @MrBoopsmooch who graciously helped me from the temple and mountain level to unlock the trophy. He's a legend. Finally all I heard left was meeting 10 random travelers and by entering and exiting the levels enough times(I recommend the 1st one with the bridge, it's a tiny bit annoying seeing the same cinematic over and over again to enter the level, but it's where I found the most players) and boom my 7.32% 100% completion rate was achieved! It took me just 1 day, and 3 hours. I really did not expect this game to be as delightful as it was despite all the glowing praise I had heard it receive. The creators, Thatgamecompany and Jenova Chen haven't made anything on modern consoles since then. Instead, opting to create a phone game called Sky: Children of the Light - hope it works out for them! My final point of emphasis would be if you enjoy podcasts generally related to video games, I strongly recommend Alanah Pearce's podcast - Play, Watch Listen. It's already around 30 episodes, I jumped on around episode 18 and binged all the prior podcasts because of how much I enjoyed it. It includes the composer of this game, Austin Wintory, in it as a consistent member! There's also Mike Bithell (creator of Thomas Was Alone) and Troy Baker (famous voice actor, voiced Joel from The Last of Us). Just given it a whirl if you're ever in the mood. Panda Score: 7.25 / 10 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post realm722 Posted October 11, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 11, 2020 My Thoughts On The Changes to PSN Levels - RIP My Platinum Streak It's that time of year again! That time when a corporate entity changes something about their product that leaves many of its' users disgruntled. I'm still using the old version of reddit and I don't know when they will inevitably force me to switch to the horrific mobile trash that has become the new default. They had to pry away the old set-up for Twitter before I finally folded and adjusted to it's new web design. Sony decided to change the trophy leveling system! In case you didn't know, the trophy levels are no longer limited between 1-100, but now 1-999. Here's the Playstation Blog post about it. There's also a pretty good post on here detailing it. Finally, a Mystic video on it. This was honestly pretty out of the blue - I imagine in preparation for Playstation 5 that is somehow basically a month away at this point. It feels kinda unbelievable it's that close. In relation to trophy levels changing, I went up from Level 28 to Level 412 with the new set-up. My initial reaction to it was being a little bit bummed out. The reason? I had a little bit of a fun game of challenging myself with always achieving a platinum on my level-up trophy. You can view it in the image above. Dating back to December 2018, I was able to earn it on Horizon Zero Dawn and since I thought it looked neat - it was something I stuck with for what was approaching 2 straight years now. Okami HD was a game I went hard at to ensure it would be immortalized. That FIFA 20 platinum was BRUTAL since it took so much effort, skill, and I was one of the very first achievers to earn it- around the 4th fastest to be exact. I managed to include all 3 Batman: Arkham games in my self-imposed challenge and while it's not included - I had also earned a trophy from every single FIFA dating back to FIFA 14 - FIFA 20 as a level-up trophy. aaaaaaaand now that's all gone. With the changes to leveling up, the website now features trophies every 10 level-ups. So while I still have a few platinums as part of my list (Horizon Zero Dawn stayed, it swapped FIFA 20 for FIFA 19, I now have the fancy Persona 5 plat on there) - it's no longer a streak and just a compilation of a bunch of trophies earned recently. I sympathize greatly now with @Cassylvania since I remember they mentioned how the trophy leveling system changed up their past trophies at one point and how it no longer applied. Welp, after having done this "going hard" for 2 1/2 years or so - it happened to me. I'll honestly probably get back on the saddle for it and try to earn platinums during every 10 level-ups just because I like the aesthetic, but I'm not gonna kill myself over it like I did when going for FIFA 20's plat. If anything, it incentivizes me to only really try hard for the 10,000th trophy milestone or 125th platinum, etc... that's on the main page of your profile. I imagine those won't change unless the website goes through a serious re-design. Will Enough Changes Like These Make Me Consider Switching From Playstation? Nah - not really to be honest. I understand the appeal of Xbox for the next generation. Being able to pay for Xbox Game Pass and gain access to so many games for that subscription fee is great... I just hate the idea of a subscription based model. I presume players are going to lose this war. It's like the music industry and how you'd have to pay an absurd amount to buy a single album, back when things like Spotify didn't exist. I feel like if you're a newbie in gaming, Xbox is honestly probably the best way to go. You get a wide range of games to play - don't have to pay full price, and if you don't like it there's a full catalogue of games to choose elsewhere. That's fantastic - but for me, I like the idea of actually owning my games(even if the majority of them are digital which yes I know means you don't actually own them but for the sake of this argument) - plus, I consider each game I play to be a proper experience. It's WHY I write such lengthy reviews about my experience with them on here. I want to metaphorically put it in a vault and say "I completed this fully - here's what I think." I feel like I read wayyy too often people say "I never finish games" or "I got bored and only played 1/4 through" or "I don't have the motivation to play games / nothing excites me". Everyone has their own circumstances, many don't have the time to play games to completion, especially lengthier ones, and some people absolutely refuse to continue playing a game they aren't enjoying. I personally disagree with that sentiment. You have to experience the bad to know what you find good. If you give up as soon as you don't enjoy something - you may miss out on a fun experience because you were too quick to let go. I initially wasn't enjoying Transistor. Hell, I dropped Dragon Quest Builders for 8 months. But I went back to them(BECAUSE I OWNED THEM), and as a result Transistor is one of my Top 10 games I have played on Playstation 4 - and I enjoyed my experience with DQB to the extent I bought the sequel, and had my jaw-drop at how that game was even created. With the Xbox Game Pass subscription model, I prolly wouldn't have bothered going back to them. I mean, maybe I would have given the achievement system but it changes the game. As for the Switch and Nintendo, I bought a Switch for Animal Crossing... I haven't really touched it in a few months. Don't get me wrong - I understand the Nintendo fandom and their undying following of the company given they've been playing their games for decades but I've never been invested like that in them. Hell, their games are also really damn expensive. You're still paying $60 for games like Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild all these years later - meanwhile you can get God of War, Spider-Man, Persona 5, and Horizon Zero Dawn for that price and possibly even cheaper if you're hunting sales wise. Speaking of that - how about the price hike from $60 to $70 moving to Playstation 5? That's another win for Xbox users - being able to play brand new games for the cost of Xbox Game Pass. I honestly think that could be what shifts the tides of the console "war" from this gen to the next. For myself personally, I think I've bought like 3 games at full price over the last 3 years? The only non-sports game being Kingdom Hearts 3. I cannot really fathom myself paying that much upfront for a game nowadays given how cheap they go on sale. I've still got plenty of PS4 games to go through, so while I will almost assuredly upgrade to Playstation 5 by June 2021 - the idea of me buying new games specifically made for the console likely won't happen until late 2021. That's fine with me! Why Caring About Trophy Levels is Dumb - and why Platinum Count Doesn't Matter WARNING: This take may upset some people as I go full gate-keeping trophy guy. This is serious business. Accounts that stack 90%+ rarity platinums are lame as hell. This is a topic that comes up very often around here - and it usually boils down to "who the hell cares let people do what they want and play what they want." - that's 100% cool, I don't care if Ratlaika Games are on the PSN Store or not. In fact, better if they keep them around. But I can't take you seriously(remember this is SERIOUS business) as a "trophy hunter" if on your stats page - your average trophy is over 60% completion(mines is at 37.57% at the time of linking). That tells me that 60% of people can do what you managed to accomplish. What's the point at the end of the day? 1) It's not playing a game you enjoy. 2) It makes your overall profile look worse. 3) You're spending money on these games so it's not like it's free and convenient. I should specify since I don't want people to get upset - I'm not talking about games like The Walking Dead or even something like Cat Quest(which while an insanely easy plat, is still a proper game). Hell, I have a Burly Men at Sea platinum on my profile that still feels kinda gross just because it was free for PS+ users at one point. I'm talking about the Mayo, Mr. Massagy, 36 Fragments, Destrounaut games. All easy 95%+ rarity platinums. It is a game that exists purely to pad your stats. The Blake Bortles of platinum stacking. I've never understood it - and likely never will understand it. It doesn't matter - I wasn't trophy hunting back in the day when these games didn't exist and platinum count "mattered" in terms of likely defining a players skill but I can only imagine those from back then who think like I do would only be firmer in their stance. I mention all of this to say - I really, really hope people don't continue buying this crap all because they want the shiny 999 level platinum icon. I won't lie, I honestly really love the change that came to the platinum image. It's... fluorescent. But allow me to be a jerk for one moment and link a specific account. (If somehow the dude reading this finds this, I'm sorry man - I honestly don't mean any disrespect it just serves as the purpose for this example). Of his 464 levels and his 178 platinums, only 36 of those are sub <50% rarity - and the vast majority, close to 3/4, are over the 70% platinum mark. That's why trophy level is pointless. In comparison to an account like TheYuriG's (who genuinely has one of the most impressive accounts on this website) - there's simply no comparison. All of this being said, play whatever the hell you want. Nobody is going to care about your account like you do. Don't play games to satisfy or impressive other people. Play games you want to play - and think of trophy hunting as a nice supplement and compliment to that. Next post will cover The Banner Saga! 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Copanele Posted October 11, 2020 Share Posted October 11, 2020 Usually I read what you write with great interest without actually commenting, but that "SERIOUS BUSINESS" section was truly a masterpiece wished I could give more thumbs up! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted October 12, 2020 Share Posted October 12, 2020 Awesome post and I fully agree. The levels part I never cared about, but stumbling upon this site which give me more stats around your trophy requirements has given me more appreciation for what I have earned or working on earning, with things like completion percent, average trophy rarity and milestones. It really does suck about the level up trophies, I suggested in another thread leaving the old level up trophies somehow on this site, maybe making it so you can switch between them on the profile? Wheres the harm in keeping old features? This site does all those calculations so it's really up to them regardless of what Sony does to the system. My account is no shiny example of what hunting accounts should look like, but those accounts that have ezpz stacks are done for one purpose and that's the level up, the most meaningless stat on this site imo. Even if the rankings go by that. Your post was a great read and I wish people at Sony would see. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJ_Radio Posted October 13, 2020 Share Posted October 13, 2020 (edited) Wow. I wasn’t aware @realm722 made a rant on the trophy system change but after reading that giant wall of text, he gets my utmost respect. Well done sir, I tip my hat to you. Yes the new system sucks. Now I never cared about the level as much as you @realm722 and @Cassylvania did, but this change now confirms I will never give an ounce of concern for the levels from this point forward. I was close to reaching level 50, but now it just looks silly seeing level 500 something attached to my account. Rather pointless now. Yeah @TheYuriG has a pretty impressive account. He already had around 12,000 trophies back in early 2016 when I was just really starting to get into trophies. A lot of stacks but I wouldn’t regard many to be EZPZ games. Plenty of skill based stuff he finished, and his topic on the SMB subforums sort of motivated me to push forward on Super Meat Boy. I just don’t like seeing a bunch of people around my rank with mostly easy stuff. I’m already seeing guys a few ranks above and below me who are at my position on the leaderboards who put in a fraction of the work and effort I put in my account. So essentially I just don’t care for the leaderboards. I could easily surpass 20,000 trophies if I stacked all those games, but what would be the point? Average trophy rarity, having fun with trophy hunting and playing the games you want to play are all more important to me anyway. Edited October 13, 2020 by Spaz 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted October 15, 2020 Author Share Posted October 15, 2020 (edited) Game: The Banner Saga Analysis: I bought Banner Saga 1 for $4.99 back in late August 2020. Before I say anything else(as this may be my most long-winded review yet), this is my surprise of 2020. SPOILER-FREE REVIEW SECTION - HOLY CRAP BUY THIS GAME IF YOU LOVE GAME WORLDS / ATMOSPHERES / GENERAL VIBES. I am going to be banging on the mf'ing table to people about this game for an annoyingly long amount of time now that I have played it. The best way I can describe it is think of The Oregon Trail + Pyre, in a high fantasy setting with tactical role-playing gameplay. I need to emphasize that I have always had a mild curiosity about this game. The artistry of it just drew me in - but what held me back was seeing how rare the platinum was (ultra rare) along with the fact that while this may sound strange, I don't like the idea of a new studio making 3 straight games in the same genre. It sounds weird, but I generally consider it to be a red flag due to the fact that... really, you got to make your dream game, and are going back to the well on it not just a second time, but a third time as well? It just made me skeptical that perhaps the series was repetitive and didn't have much to offer. DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE I MADE. The fact that there are two more games in this series waiting for me to play makes them my most anticipated games I will be waiting for to go on sale - and the second they do I am going to snatch them up, and they likely won't last too long before I begin playing them. I have so many glowing things to say about my experience and time with this game that it consumed me for a week and despite the fact I completed 3 full playthroughs, I am here typing out this lengthy review(nearly 3,000 words forgive me) about it and am not sick of it or relieved to be finished playing it. Do yourself a favor, pick it up for $5 when it goes on sale - and get ready for a trip. Alright, spoiler free section is over. All ye who wonder beyond this point have been warned. What finally compelled me to buy Banner Saga 1? To be honest, I don't quite remember - but if I had to guess I'd say it's the fact that Austin Wintory (composer behind the music from Journey, Abzu) mentioned that he had worked on this game. For whatever reason, despite the fact I was put-off by the fact there was a trilogy and the ultra rare plat(ultra rare platinums themselves aren't a turn-off for me by the way - it's the idea of playing a game I'm insure of, hating it, and then suffering through it just to get a decent percentage since I'd absolutely hate to have a F or D rank on my profile) - the artistry of the game finally suckered me in. Boy am I glad it did. I also ultimately got the game in a bundle with 5 others towards late August as "games that'll keep me busy until 2021" - and this fit in nicely as a wildcard to a few others I was pretty sure I'd enjoy (Beholder 2, inFamous First Light, and 88 Heroes to name a few) What's the story of Banner Saga 1? Where do I even begin? Rather than confuse with the sheer amount of characters in this story(and lemme tell you - there are A LOT of them), let's get some very basic facts out of there. There are 4 main entities or species found in Banner Saga 1. Normal people, such as Rook and Alette, they are the father-daughter duo who will be the main protagonists of this story. You also have varl, a powerful viking-esque race that is strictly male, twice the height and size of humans, and cannot reproduce to increase their population. An example of one of them is Rook and Alette's companion, Iver. Thirdly, you have the dredge. A race made of stone, they are the "bad guys" of this game and the ones you will largely endlessly be killing over and over again. There is not a single NPC or companion you find in the game that you can interact with that are dredge, so you know they're the real baddies. If my understanding of the game is not incorrect, the dredge were created as a means there were intended to bring humans and varl's together given they were always bickering and at war with one another - and with beings as powerful as the dredge who could annihilate both - they had no choice but to work together in order to avoid extinction. Finally, you have menders. These are humans but they use maaaaaaaagic. They have a huge plot significance later in the game in the form of Eyvind and Juno, I'll be perfectly honest and say I don't completely understand them but basically they're wickedly powerful and aren't to be trifled with. Now with the context of the main groups you'll be associating with on your journey - we can get to the core of the Banner Saga's appeal to me. You're headed to a final destination, the world is ending, and you and this detachment of men, women, children, and varls are just trying to survive it. The dredge are swarming every city and town you come across, the world is in chaos and in ruin - and you're just trying to make it to where the hell you need to go in order to survive. This entails keeping the caravan of characters you're with satisfied by ensuring morale stays high answering correctly to random events and taking an appropriate amount of rests. You also have to actually make sure you have enough supplies to support the hundreds of people traveling with you across these cascading lands. You're going to encounter characters along the way that you don't know if you can trust or not, if you do, they can prove to be an essential ally and member of your team, and other teams it will backfire on your horrifically. I LOVE THIS. I utterly adore seeing characters in a damn game come together, put up with one another, and grow these bonds due to their circumstances. A YouTuber by the name of NeverKnowsBest opened my eyes to this when he was reviewing Supergiant Games 4 releases. When reviewing Pyre(which is one of my Top 5 games ever played in Playstation 4) - he mentioned how it's an inaccurate description to call it a visual novel + fantasy basketball game. Instead, he'd choose Banner Saga 1 as the game to compare it with. In part due to its' visual style, but also because "these games both focus on the journey of a large cast of characters and the important decisions that need to be made on the way." Just hearing that made everything click for me - the sheer coincidence that I would start playing Banner Saga 1 on October 7th, 2020 - and he just so happened to release this video on October 10th, 2020 in order for me to make that correlation and have that eureka moment of discovering why I was enjoying Banner Saga made everything click. If you're ever into extremely deep intricate critiques about video games, I strongly recommend glancing at his channel and seeing if any games he's covered catch your eye - he's phenomenal, and I imagine one day he'll blow up on par with the likes of Joseph Anderson and Matthewmatosis. Who are my favorite characters in Banner Saga 1? How can you not love Iver? He's the beast of the party when you start off with Rook/Alette and his commitment to them makes him easily endearing at the very start. Rook is great as he's the leader of this caravan and you'll have events where you can join in on singing and crack jokes to lift the overall morale of everybody, extremely necessary on such an arduous journey. Egil is a cool dude - on my 1st playthrough I accidentally got him killed at the very earliest opportunity so that was my bad, but on subsequent playthroughs I kept him around and his armor makes him an utter tank necessary for Hard mode in my mind. Speaking of characters I killed, I let Gunnulf get flung over the edge with the wagon, completely missing out on his ridiculously OP strength moves - well done by me. Oddleif becomes one of my favorites in part due to the fact she hates the phrase "strong woman" and also because she pulled off one of the most clutch moments I've had in video gaming history recently. At the very end of the game, on the last fight, when you are dealing with Bellower(final boss of the game who's an immortal demi-god) I was down 4 of my 6 characters, and the only ones left alive were Krumr with 8 armor and 1 health, and basically a full health Oddleif. This is huge because 1) if I lost, I would have to re-load to the 1st section of the fight since one of the trophies on hard mode is beating the entire game without losing a fight and 2) it's the freaking final boss man who wants to die. Well Oddleif, with the Bellower down to 4 armor but still at max 20 health, managed to get a CRITICAL HIT(15% chance with her item equipped) to knock him down from 20 to 4 health(woulda done 8 damage, instead did 16) - and I was able to kill him two turns later with her before Bellower's companions destroyed me. Such an awesome moment that can only happen spontaneously - she sky-rocketed in the rankings for me due to that clutch play. Finally, Eyvind/Bersi/Nid are all chill as well. Having an awesome atmosphere and story is cool and all, but how the hell is the gameplay? I say this 100% genuinely - it is fun and engaging despite the fact it is not an actively chaotic style to the mold of a Dead Cells or Pyre(constantly having to react to the enemies inputs at any given time). But as someone who was able to fall in love with Slay the Spire, the amount of calculations this game will have you doing in your own head, specifically on Hard mode - made it a smashing experience. I had fun with the game on Normal plenty, and actually died a lot on the 1st part of the final boss battle around 3 times(mostly because I didn't know to hit with the silver arrow and kept dying) - but on Hard mode, the difficulty takes a leap. You are going to be scratching and clawing your way to each next encounter just desperately trying to keep all your guys healthy. The varl, specifically Iver and Krumr whenever they get hurt or fall in battle is devastating - due to the fact that they would suffer -6 strength for the next combat encounter. When you're barely surviving as is - having those debilitating effects happen because of your carelessness deeply incentivizes the player to be careful about planning out their actions and not sacrificing units, since the only way to recoup that lost strength is by resting, extending the journey, wasting resources, etc... I died a lot on the 1st bridge battle at Einartoft. For whatever reason, I just couldn't beat it - had to reload like 4-5 times and finally overcame the obstacle. The rest of the way I did not lose a battle or have to reload my save, but damn if it didn't come close a few times towards the end. In Boersgard, when the hefty dredge units are descending upon you 4-5 on an encounter at a time when you're only utilizing 2 varl, trying to avoid injury - it becomes extremely difficult. I only managed to win the final battle on my 1st try on Hard due to Oddleif being a clutch goddess. All in all, I very much enjoyed the gameplay - it is easily best experienced on Hard after a Normal playthrough in my mind - since it's important for you to learn the importance of taking down armor vs. always attacking strength/health, as well as having high spirits helps morale with will power, and upgrading armor break / exertion is also essential for taking down the huge dredge that descend upon you towards the end of the game. So you love this game, cool - but this is a trophy hunting website, how are they? Honestly, the best way I could recommend playing this game to someone who's going in for the platinum - just do the opening Normal playthrough without changing the difficulty and accept you're gonna have to do 3 full playthroughs. I tried following a somewhat outline without spoilers, but I ended up running out of supplies in Chapter 2 after not picking the option to recoup supplies with Rook/Alette - and despite the fact I never ran out of supplies again, I failed to unlock the Quartermasters trophy because of it. Still, I unlocked 32 of the 39 trophies - went hard on getting Forced March, and defeating a single enemy with each character in the game. On your 2nd playthrough, do Hard - make sure you don't lose a battle, and I picked up Innocent (Alette killing no humans/varl) as well as Beat the Odds (Egil survives to the end) which I had missed on my 1st. One thing I will say - I think a 3rd playthrough will just make your life easier than forcing just 2 due to the fact that Master's Tactician could be very tricky to get enough characters up to Level 5. I know I didn't have the renown for it, so by playing on easy I never came close to running out of supplies, got Quartermasters, and then went into the training tent before Boersgard, bumped the difficulty up to Hard, and did Master's Tactician due to all the giant varl blocking each other and me sniping them to death(along with having an OP Gunnulf). While this is an ultra rare plat - I suspect the vast majority of that is because most people who play this game only play it once. If you properly dedicate yourself, and learn to be proficient on Hard difficulty - you can obtain this platinum. It's no doubt challenging, but I don't believe Hard mode demanded such excellence from the player that I think it's unreasonable. Plus, you earn this glorious image of Iver for your efforts - it's milestone worthy dammit! I ultimately earned the 3.99% ultra rare platinum in 1 week and 10 hours. My Concluding Thoughts - I am thrilled I discovered this game. It also does something I'm a huge fan of in terms of spectacle so well given the environment. That fight when I was playing as Iver, thinking I was going to die to Bellower and trying to run away on the bridge had me glued to my screen. Hell, towards the end of the game - discovering that the dredge are also running away from something devouring the land is heart-breaking when you realize you've been killing women and children, and even Iver only managed to kill a Sundr because she was vulnerable. On my first two playthroughs - I let Rook shoot the silver arrow at Bellower and die and have his farewell burial, but on my 3rd I opted for Alette to take the final shot. For whatever reason, I expected her not to die and there be some alternate outcome.... nope. She was gone. I don't know how that's going to work for the sequel games but I can't freaking wait! It's so awesome when you discover a series years after it released (game came out on PC in January 2014, and came to Playstation 4 in January 2016) - and get to enjoy the full fruits of the series all in one go with anticipation. That's why I don't understand the complaints for "what's there's going to be to play on Playstation 5?" Surely there's some games you've overlooked from the past that will run wonderfully that you can enjoy in the meantime while new titles are getting created! Just a tremendous job by Stoic Studio, and I can't wait to see to see what they create next. Panda Score: 8.6 / 10 Edited October 15, 2020 by realm722 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted October 18, 2020 Author Share Posted October 18, 2020 Game: Life is Strange Analysis: I bought Life is Strange for $3.99 back in late August 2020, and boy does this game get a lot of mixed reviews from the masses. On one hand, I understand it. This is a graphic adventure game with a story focused around two teenage girls in small-town America (Arcadia Bay in this case in the state of Washington). This game will receive rave 10/10 reviews from some who utterly adore it and fell in love with Max and Chloe, while others will disparage it with the colloquial "Life is Cringe", with criticisms of the dialogue from the incessant use of "hella" and complete failure to grasp "teenage speech". Well yanno what - having originally been on this hype train back in 2015 when the episodes were released episodically and absolutely loving it - IF LIKING LIFE IS STRANGE IS WRONG, I DON'T WANT TO BE RIGHT. I remember anticipating the days to each new episodes release and awaiting by favorite YouTuber to drop their video in regards to the decisions they were making and which way I was personally leaning. If for whatever reason you don't want to spend the commitment to play this, I strongly recommend YTer(he's basically retired now, but does tabletop stuff on Twitch) from Deadbones. It is one of my favorite YouTuber Let's Plays of all-time - and given how engaged he is with the story and anticipates so much in advance (Professor Douchebag!) I think just about anybody can enjoy watching it even if you aren't loving the game. Hell, even if you don't wanna commit to all of it, watch Episode #5, Polarized #2. That video makes me cackle with laughter at the goofiness. and that's really the point I want to convey. You don't have to buy in on all the mellow dramatic teenageness of this story in order to enjoy it. There are parts that are a slog to get through with the dialogue, but the fun here? When Warren is going "APE APE APE, WHO WANTS TO GO APE?", to the part where Mr. Jefferson destroys Max's face when you warn David too quickly, to Nathan's hilariously evil lines of "GET THE F%@K MY FACE" being about 20x louder than any other audio clip in the entire game. To the entire game being able to be summarized: Brooks like Warren but Warren likes Max Max likes Chloe but Chloe likes Rachel Rachel likes Frank but Frank likes beans (shamelessly stolen from the r/LifeisStrange subreddit - I can't BELIEVE that was 5+ years ago) But yea - I just always have a fun time with this game man. It's got some ridiculous points in it and some lines you'll groan at, but we have to give Dontnod credit for what they credited. First, the concept of being able to rewind time and un-do critical decisions you've made being at the core of a sort of "choose your own adventure" is fantastic. Genuinely great concept. Of course, some will argue "your choices don't really matter, things mostly turn out the same minus the final decision." Of course ya dummy! People need to understand the limitations of making video games such as these. No developer on the planet is going to dedicate 15+ hours of play-time to work that many players won't see in a game like this. These games have to stay on the rails and just change some seasoning - the one game I've seen be able to pull it off on a truly immaculate scale is Detroit: Become Human with all it's branching narratives, and hell, that game also still draws criticism. Besides the concept, this game had some dope ass characters. Initially I was anti-Chloe for the longest time - I know for many she's Arcadia's Bae, but despite the fact she had such difficult circumstances with her father dying, her attitude towards everybody wasn't justified. Still, I enjoy her in the end and hey - it jump-started Ashly Burch's voice acting career. Besides her, Warren's meh, but David Madsen is my personal clutch MVP! A lot of people disliked him through the first 2 ish episodes but I don't know how he couldn't have won you over in the end. Joyce is fun, Frank's beans make me crack up every time, Max is that quirky girl but you eventually come around to love her given the circumstances she's dealing with. I ultimately choose to save Arcadia Bay and sacrifice Chloe, and damn man, seeing that funeral scene still got me a bit sad even as I was "rushing' through the games for the trophies. All in all, I just enjoy this game - and maybe it was because I was around while the hype was alive, but it felt like a fun event in gaming and something the entire community gathered around to speculate on. Hell, even going back to it - I remember the tripping out "wild" sequences at the end of the game where frigging Pompidou can send you messages was damn when I saw it back then, I like the ending more now - who woulda thunk? With the game having a total of 60 trophies and all of them having to do with picking up optional photos, picking up the 35.50% rarity platinum I managed to pick up in 1 day and 12 hours, and should be 0 hassle for anybody going for it in the future. Life is Strange is a good dumb fun time if you're willing to open your mind, and dare I say if you're willing to open your heart to it, you may find yourself moved more than expected. Panda Score: 6.6 / 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted October 20, 2020 Author Share Posted October 20, 2020 (edited) Does a game having a harder platinum indicate that I am going to enjoy it more? INTRO - This is a question I decided to pose since I've always felt I tend to avoid super difficult platinums ever since I really started trophy hunting in 2018. At this moment (October 20th, 2020) - I have 109 platinums to my name. An overall profile completion percentage of 96.21%, and thankfully will never have to deal with the struggle of worrying about a 100% account (I used to only play sports games - NBA2k has assured me this fantasy will never become a temptation). Of my 109 platinums, I have 19 ultra rare platinums. That's pretty decent - no? But a lot of those are sports platinums. I don't really take pride in those as maybe some others would since they're my bread and butter. I was nursed on those games, I know their ins and outs - it's not really that much of a struggle for me (some FIFA platinums yes - but it's not the same). If you remove sports games, I only have a whooping 8 ultra rare platinums. Granted, I have tried harder as of late to attempt "harder" games - hell, my 3 rarest non-sports platinums were all earned in 2020 (Stardew Valley, Unravel Two, LittleBigPlanet 3) - and all this has led me to ask the question... does a game having a harder platinum mean I enjoyed the game more? Did I bask in the struggle, and its' eventual conquering? The compilation of these stats will provide a hopeful reply. Just so everybody understands the set-up, here's how I'm sort the colors by for platinum / 100% rarity. Green = 0-5% Aqua = 5-10% Blue = 10-20% Pink = 20-30% Red = 30%+ I swear I'm not color-blind, I know the pink there is purple but it'll make sense below. 9.00+ Games Platinums / 100%'s Analysis: Undeniably, the fact that 4 of my Top 8 games played on PS4 are ultra rares is something to take note of. Hell, Persona 5 is a ridiculously involved platinum that requires meticulously planning out your routine in order to avoid any missables, and the only reason it's up over 10% in my mind is because of how much of a dedicated hardcore fanbase it has. Stardew's plat is deeply involved with having you to collect every fish, find every treasure, make boatloads of money, but the ultimate prize belongs to "Journey of the Prairie King" for denying so many people the platinum - hell myself included for the longest time. Dead Cells and Slay the Spire are two games I'd put into the same category of being ruthlessly difficult rogue-lites I fell in love with and played to death. But then you have a game in Pyre that is so unique amongst its' contemporaries here. Not ruthlessly difficult, but a sports high fantasy role playing game that I adore and even go back to play to this day. Unravel is prolly pretty damn difficult for most peoples 1st platinum ever achieved, but it's the game that made me start trophy hunting in the first place - so the fact it's my 3rd "easiest" to achieve up here is something to note. Finally, Gravity Rush is a game that I fell in love with because of its' concept of flipping gravity on its' head on a dime whenever I wanted. This was one I was just barely testing the waters of new games outside of the sports landscape and it really stuck with me, even if now I would honestly bump it down to a high 8 rather than a low 9. Overall, there's no denying that from this batch - I clearly enjoy a challenge with my favorite games. Average Platinum Rarity: 9.65% 8.00+ Games Platinums / 100%'s Analysis: One thing I must make very clear is if a game has DLC, I am including the 100% rarity number over the platinum rarity assuming I have completed it. That's why Horizon Zero Dawn and Rocket League's looks so rare / difficulty when in reality they're pretty basic platinums. Same applies for Arkham Knight - generally speaking it's a tricky plat (7% ish) but not impossible - meanwhile the DLC which takes awhile to grind plus the challenges such as Requiem for a Killer take it into that sub <1% stratosphere. Besides that fact though, generally speaking me liking a challenge remains consitent here. Specifically in regards to a game like Unravel Two for example. I busted like hell in order to make that my 100th plat and part of that struggle made me enjoy the game more. In terms of the exceptions, DQB2 is high up there but I was so awed by it - it commanded my respect. Oxenfree is similar to Gravity Rush in the sense that I was dabbling in new waters and it genuinely impressed me(I really wanna play Afterparty when it goes on sale at some point!0 Finally, I think I can say pretty comfortably that I over-rated Children of Morta. It's one of the softer roguelites I've enjoyed - and if I could re-do my rankings I'd put it at a median 7 rather than a low 8. Average Platinum / 100% Rarity: 10.44% 7.00+ Games Platinums / 100%'s Analysis: Hey things finally open up around it! We have a number of games "in the red" and a lot of games in this batch. Of the higher end portion, Hollow Knight is only that common because of an exploit. I REALLY enjoyed A Hat in Time, and it deserves to be that high despite how easy it is. Spider-Man's rarity is saved by completing all the DLC, Tropico 5 looks borderline impossible when it isn't nearly at all that difficult, and then you have a game like FIFA 20 that is 100% justified in that 1% rarity and I can say I earned that and enjoyed it while pursuing it(hell, I enjoyed the head-to-head online aspect and playing the game casually even after achieving it). Still gotta play KH3 DLC, Celeste's Assist Mode breaks that games, and finally I'd like to point out that there's a drop-off point in my rankings between Cosmic Star Heroine and VA-11 HA11-A between everything else in the 7.00 range. I consider the upper echelon to be special games highly rated, hard to break into that group and above(hell I think that's why I feel like the Children of Morta ranking is a mistake - it deserves to be after CSH) - and all the games after this have a flaw in some way that held them back. VA-11HA11-A didn't deliver in many ways I wanted, Owlboy's combat wasn't deep enough, Yoku's lacked some of the game world charm, Asylum was just starting out, DQB needed a sequel to fix all their issues, and so forth. This is a good batch of games - but I think the average platinum % makes it clear the difficulty is letting up. Average Platinum / 100% Rarity: 15.56% 6.00+ Games Platinums / 100%'s Analysis: The 6.00 range is a range of games that basically falls into "maybe this game had a cool concept or two I liked, maybe I'd recommend it depending the purpose if it's cheap, but I didn't really love this game - perhaps liked at best." Like, I don't really remember why I liked Kona that much besides the narration. For whatever reason, I look back super fondly on Onrush and wonder why it's not a low 7 - why? I don't freaking know. Rogue Aces was tricky but quick to breeze through for a free PS+ game. Same for 2064 following a guide. Why did I rate Sexy Brutale that highly when I don't remember caring for it besides the music? Subnautica is a fan favorite of many I didn't love like that. Sonic Mania was a nightmare for me until I learned to love the pain. The Spyro games are really gonna drag up the overall completion % of this category since I find those games to be empty calories (simple, easy, not a whole lot of substance). In fact, looking through this the hardest games are the Madden's (as I mentioned, bread and butter for me), LittleBigPlanet 3 that was a struggle but I remember... kinda enjoying the grind to the end? Sonic Mania was a difficult trip getting all the blue spheres. Chess Ultra required me to make a bunch of foreign Russian emails. Tiny Brains! That game was fun - and finally Knowledge is Power which is nowhere near worthy of a sub <2.25% plat, it's just that most people don't bother playing for it as much as I did. All in all, eh? Average Platinum / 100% Rarity: 18.79% 5.00 - 4.00 Games Platinums / 100%'s Analysis: I don't really like these games. Usually if you just do something I mildly enjoy - you'll score a 6 and I'll get you the hell out of here. But these games... something about them made me dislike them. Gravel is a bad dirt racing game that's not fun but mindless. Valley wasn't that bad, I dunno why I scored it a 5. I couldn't support Monster Energy Supercross given the advertisements. Sea of Solitude I played solely because I had EA Access for the month while playing Madden 20, and it was so cheap and easy I did it despite hating it. Silence had some moments, but generally not a fan. Another World is beloved by Tim Rogers - I guess I'm the moron. Catlateral Damage and Mahjong are each mindless. Child of Light is a bad video game and I cannot fathom the love and praise it receives. Maybe I treat it harshly since it was the game I immediately played after my 2019 Game of the Year, Dead Cells. Burly Men at Sea is a free platinum by Sony - and I just didn't get Hatoful Boyfriend. Just below that is the dungeon tier. Two garbage games I bought for $1 at random times just to get a 100% and finally.... Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below. How do I put this? If I was talking to someone about video games, and yanno, they mentioned that they enjoyed Uncharted, Final Fantasy, Minecraft, and whatever else you desire, but they throw in Dragon Quest Heroes 1 as one of their favorite games - I would quietly walk away and make sure I never speak with that person ever again. Depending on their enjoyment of the game, perhaps file an application for them at a psychiatric ward. That was the game that taught me "be careful with what you buy if you don't wanna to suffer a seemingly endless mindless grind." So in a way, thanks DQ Heroes! (5.00's) Average Platinum / 100% Rarity: 31.64% (4.00's) Average Platinum / 100% Rarity: 37.92% In Conclusion - WOW! I BELIEVE WE'VE REACHED OUR RESULTS! OR perhaps we've reached a conundrum similar to the chicken and the egg. The stats make it clear that at the top - going down, the average platinum / 100% rarity gets easier the further down the list we go - but now we must ask. Is it... Option A - I enjoy games more if the platinum is more difficult. Option B - I only play very hard games I'm likely to enjoy, hence leading to them being higher up the list. I won't take a random chance on one I may not like. Basically, I'm not gonna play Super Meat Boy on a whim since I know its' platinum is insanely difficult. I won't even touch that game since I know it's unlikely I'll fall in love with that, and I don't want a non-100% on my profile. Compare this to a game such as Dragon Sinker - a KEMCO game that I probably won't absolutely love but if it's cheap and I see it's a 40% plat, I can take a swing on it and even if I don't enjoy it - who cares I can play through it quickly and move on with my life. A difficult platinum typically requires a time investment. In fact, the majority of the games at the top are games I spent many weeks playing (Persona 5, Dead Cells, Slay the Spire, FIFA 17) with some rare exceptions being a game like Pyre (man that game is special). I think my goal moving forward is don't be completely scared off by a sub <2% platinum. I gambled on a game like Banner Saga that I ddin't know I'd enjoy - and even held off from for a long time due to it being an ultra rare. It has become the newest series I'm hyped for and I am anticipating badly the next time the 2nd and 3rd games go on sale. As a result, I decided to gamble on the gam Jotun and will play it eventually(from the makers of Sundered which I played and thought was alright, I REALLY wanna play their latest game Spiritfarer) - but I'm taking a risk on it not knowing if I'll love it despite how difficult it since the art style has drawn me in. Now, you won't find me playing Crypt of the Necrodancer and Spelunky 2 any time soon in all likelihood - but I am going to try and be more open mind moving forward. Plus, I know for a fact that the "struggle" of achieving something made conquering it that much more delicious than simply having games hand the ultimate prize over to you. Hope this piqued anybody elses curiosity to check out how the difficulty of the platinum of their own games may have a correlation or not. Thanks for reading! - and hope even if you didn't at least you appreciated the pretty tables. Edited October 20, 2020 by realm722 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Copanele Posted November 2, 2020 Share Posted November 2, 2020 Again, great read (you really put one hell of an effort on these posts,truly motivated). You made me check my own list now and I have to say, while this is not a set in stone rule, I generally enjoyed the UR/tough as nails platinums more. I'd gladly go through the similar pains of Street Fighter 4 just because of how fun it was to overcome the challenge, however you won't catch me replaying something like One Piece Pirate Warriors again. Handing the ultimate prize like it would be some cheap waffle is simpl not satisfying. However playing just for difficulty's sake really is not worth it. But overall...yeah if a platinum is hard, I'll enjoy it way more. I think you will enjoy Jotun. It can be tough, however it's not as impossible. Maybe frustrating at some points but manageable. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted November 3, 2020 Author Share Posted November 3, 2020 On 11/2/2020 at 5:32 AM, Copanele said: Again, great read (you really put one hell of an effort on these posts,truly motivated). You made me check my own list now and I have to say, while this is not a set in stone rule, I generally enjoyed the UR/tough as nails platinums more. I'd gladly go through the similar pains of Street Fighter 4 just because of how fun it was to overcome the challenge, however you won't catch me replaying something like One Piece Pirate Warriors again. Handing the ultimate prize like it would be some cheap waffle is simpl not satisfying. However playing just for difficulty's sake really is not worth it. But overall...yeah if a platinum is hard, I'll enjoy it way more. I think you will enjoy Jotun. It can be tough, however it's not as impossible. Maybe frustrating at some points but manageable. Thanks man! I also think you hit the nail on the head with those two lines in bold as well. My most treasured platinums ARE the more tricky ones I've ever accomplished... but that doesn't mean I'm gonna be out here trying all sub <1% games thinking that's where I solely get the enjoyment from. I like to think of it as an ultra rare game keeps you honest as a player - you don't always want a constant struggle where every game you play you feel like you're pushing a boulder up a mountain, but you also don't want everything to be a walk-in-park where the game feels like it's empty calories. I think the recipe for success I've found is mildly/moderately difficult games (10-20% platinums) with the occasional gauntlet (sub <5% game) immediately followed by a cake walk (>30% platinums) as a reward for my efforts - then cycle and repeat. If I play too many gauntlets, I'm likely to get burnt out and feel like I'm making little progress in terms of playing different games each month - and too many cake walks is 1) boring and 2) much like in real life, nauseating when you have too much. Just briefly scrolling through your account - I can tell you've been going off since June. To get the Mortal Kombat (0.62%), Street Fighter V (1.23%), Injustice (0.15%), Super Street Fighter IV (0.42%), AND Overwatch (0.14%) 100%'s in the span of a few months is insane in my eyes. The easiest game in that span is Far Cry Primal - keep it up! and thank you for the news on Jotun, I'm likely not gonna get around to it very soon but I'm glad to hear it's not impossibly difficult. I have heard there's some RNG nonsense but I conquered Stardew Valley's Fector's Challenge Coin nonsense so I should be able to stomach it! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted November 6, 2020 Author Share Posted November 6, 2020 (edited) Game: Graveyard Keeper Analysis: My goodness.... we have finally arrived at this game. I bought Graveyard Keeper back on December 2nd, 2019 for $6.99. Why the hell did it take me a year to play? The answer to that is a tiny bit complicated. I had Graveyard Keeper on my eye when it went on sale since I absolutely loved the vibe of people saying "It's like a dark version of Stardew Valley." Given the fact Stardew Valley is the 2nd greatest game of All-Time that I've played on Playstation 4 - you can see how I may have been intrigued. But there was a lot of stuff about this game scaring me off. I saw there were a few DLC trophies, I had heard there were glitches and possible missables in a game that you can dedicate 50+ hours to and then have to start all over. That terrified me. So I pushed this game off - first into 2020, then through March, through the summer, all the way until here in mid-October when I had just finished playing Life is Strange and reached my personal quota of at minimum trying to play 4 games a month so I always keep things fresh. With nearly half the month to go, I had time to dedicate to a time-consuming game and not lose pace with my tracker. Ni No Kuni 1? Eh - not yet. Banner Saga 2 and 3 hadn't gone on sale yet so I couldn't play them... oh whaddya know! How about this game I purchased damn near a year ago that I ignored! I also had realized that when I bought it I had also played $1.74 for the Breaking Dead DLC that comes along with this game. Little did I know how essential that decision would ultimately end up being - regardless, let's get to the meat and bones (heh) of this game. Is it any good? Is it awful? Well..... I am going to make 4 statements below. You choose which one you believe I'm leaning in terms of evaluating this game. Graveyard Keeper is... * A) a tedious awful grind that has somehow managed to embody everything bad about games like Stardew Valley * B( a master-class in always giving the player the next task or goal to go for, and offers the layers needed to make a game like this last * C) a game that can best be described as empty calories - you'll play, not really know if you're enjoying it, but continue on anyways * D) one of the best casual sit back and relax releases out there, with a delightful spooky twist on the typically peaceful genre So you picked your guess, right? Here is the correct answer! Yea - I don't know what the hell to make of this game. I actually wrote down notes as I played since this is such a long game, I didn't want my memories regarding the start of the game to get fogged up with how I felt about it later. Here are a few things I wrote towards the beginning of my playthrough "insanely slow start, humongous grind" which is 100% true. You start this game off at a snail's pace. Really - I don't know if this is me being impatient or the game setting you off on a frustrating course at the start. I understand there's no "seasons" or year limits like in Harvest Moon. All that matters is that there are 6 days of the week and one of the Bishop, Inquisitor, Miss Charm, Snake, Astrologer, or Merchant will be available in town to be talked to each of those days. But man at the start when you're just trying to get your bearings can it feel like a lot. I then wrote down "This is like a Nightmare Stardew Valley" - and that statements has a double meaning. On one hand, it literally is taking a lot of elements from Stardew Valley of farming, going to the mines/dungeon, fishing, interacting with townsfolk, all in this pixel art aesthetic but... it's the fact you are here against your will whereas in SV you decided to give up corporate life to try and fulfillment in another way. Instead of farming crops or livestock, it's literally corpses and stocking up a graveyard. But it's ALSO "Nightmare Stardew Valley" since it feels like a game with less polish and embodies so many of SV's bad qualities. How about that inventory management? Lemme tell you this - if you HATE inventory management in games, you're gonna probably not like this game. There's so much juggling you have to do and I had to dedicate 20-25 minutes on multiple occasions re-organizing all of my chests to ensure whenever I wanted to craft materials - I had the materials where they needed to be. There's also just so much less polish. A perfect way to exemplify this is in the fishing mini-game. I personally enjoyed the way SV handled it. Here it is in SV briefly. Here it is in GK briefly. There's virtually no difference right? WRONG! This is how little subtle changes hand-crafted by a developer make a world's difference. In SV, when the fish bites - you get an exclamation point above your hand and a little sound that alerts you. Compare this to Graveyard Keeper where the only indication a fish has "bitten" is a minuscule hard to see circle that is virtually invisible unless you're reasonably close to your television while you play. Just this slight, almost irrelevant detail made me say "damn... this really is Nightmare Stardew Valley." But for as much as it seem I just ripped the game for a paragraph straight - I never once felt, "oh my god this is a miserable slog I hate this game" like I did when I was playing say... The Last Guardian. Instead I just put my head down and kept playing. At times I wondered "am i enjoying this?" and didn't have a clear response. I wasn't hating it, but I wasn't slowly falling in love with it either. What kept me going was the progression loop. Each day I had 6 different things I was working towards - and I think that is the quintessential way to describe the average players experience in Graveyard Keeper. You are going to feel like you are in quicksand - always one tech point behind, you need to catch up and keep pace, and you're always going to be chasing the goals set in place for you. Is that bad or good? I dunno. It sure made sitting down and playing 3 straight hours fly by. One thing that came to mind when playing was Joseph Anderson's review of Forager. He mentioned how while he didn't even really enjoy the game, he couldn't stop playing it. The progression feedback loop was so present that it was like a weekend binger he couldn't put down. I'm not sure if I'd judge Graveyard Keeper that harshly. I don't feel like it manipulates the players mind that extremely as say - a clicker game. Plus, the way you progress in GK is so much slower man... it's almost unfeasible. The way they make you manually carry logs around. The need to constantly grow and re-grow crops. The way faith is such an elusive resource that it can only be collected once per week, yet it's needed to study so many of the resources in the game in order for alchemy to really start working. What honestly happened to me - and this may be spoilers is I thought "well I need to get more zombies to facilitate things better, but I should probably get more embalming tools before I do that, but I need to progress far enough in another questline in order to make the corrupted body parts available, ahhhhhhhhh" - which all brings me to the paragraph below. PERSON READING THIS - If you're considering buying this game, if you don't want to read everything here, PLEASE READ THIS PART. BUYING THE BREAKING DEAD DLC IS AN ABSOLUTE MUST BEFORE YOU EVEN CONSIDERING PLAYING THIS GAME. I cannot emphasize how emphatically this game would be downright awful, and likely take 100+ hours in order to complete and platinum without the zombies available in the Breaking Dead DLC. It is unfathomable to me how this could even be released without them. What you need to "resurrect" corpses in this game is a resurrection table, 10 faith, and Zombie Juice. Depending on the number of white skulls (this is something that will also delay you if you wanna get them properly efficient) - you can increase their work efficiency. What they can do is 1) chop and bring you wood logs. 2) mine and bring you iron, coal, stone, and marble. 3) farm whatever crops available. 4) create items and materials for you and put them on auto-pilot. 5) help facilitate the merchant and the trade store for automatic money each week. Once again - I BELIEVE THIS GAME WOULD BE INSUFFERABLE WITHOUT THIS DLC. For myself personally, once I reached the "won" state of this game - was once I had zombies bringing me wood constantly, bringing me stone/marble/iron, at least 3 in the farm creating the infinite loop of gold food resources such as lentils, pumpkins, and onions, and finally one creating the crates and delivering them to the merchants. It won't be quick whatsoever to stock up on the 10+ you'll need but just get that loop going as soon as you can to make your life easier - trust me, don't even worry too much about efficiency as the idea is just to get the loop going. I ignored having food for far too long and always slept to recover energy but in all reality by getting the garden going earlier with farm harvesting zombies you can make your life far easier than I made mine. In the words of the immortal @Cassylvania - "farming sim games are like crack for me." has never applied so truthfully as it does to my experience with this game. Despite all the flaws - I can acknowledge that there's some phenomenal stuff here. The wit and humor when it comes to the actual story of this game is marvelous. I love the dialogue and interactions with the donkey that deliver the corpses to you on a daily basis - him stating he needs carrots and won't work for nothing. Gerry the bouncing skull, seeing the interactions amongst the focus cast of 6 but even there being additional characters that get their shine like Vagner really is something. I don't believe this game was rushed or pumped out, a lot of love and care was put into crafting a delightful story despite so many dark elements surrounding it - and your Graveyard Keeper man finding himself in this bizarre world and his bluntness often leading to humorous encounters was a nice touch. I also do feel like it's fair to say there's more complexity to be enjoyed here than in a game such as SV. I had 0 idea what I was doing when initially burying all the corpses I received in the graveyard. I just removed all the body parts and then buried them since I figured they would be valuable resources. Then I discovered you have to balance red / white skulls in order to get a good rating when buried, and that became a fun game to manage whatever random corpse was delivered that day. You combine that with juggling corpse management, the garden with farming, creating raw materials by your house, going to the cellar and managing wine/brewery, plus alchemy beneath the church, along with the dungeon/fishing - that's a lot of different gameplay mechanics to be learned and tweaked with - hence my "you're always going to feel like you're chasing" when playing. There's also some genuinely stunning aesthetics to be found here - in the "dark medieval rural small town" sort of way. Seeing the patrons at the bar, the burned down home by Witch Hill, going to the Swamp and visiting Clotho. All in all - what's my final conclusion with Graveyard Keeper? It is a game crafted with love and care, with too much of an affinity for grinding and over-whelming the player. The developer, Lazy Bear Games(amazing name) - is soon to be releasing another DLC for this game titled "Game of Crone" that is soon to come for PS4. I imagine it'll come along with some more trophies. For that reason, I avoided purchasing "Stranger Sins DLC" since I figured I'm going to have to revisit this game in the future and I'll play both then. My total play-time on the main menu came out to 305.3 days before I reached the final cutscene and achieved the platinum. Given the fact each day is 7 minutes and 30 seconds, that comes out to 37 hours playing time (assuming I never slept which I did plenty of given the fact I needed to regain energy). I earned the 20.64% rarity platinum in 1 week and 6 days, and will undoubtedly be back in the future if I'm able to capture the future DLCs on sale when they go on discount, and guess what? I'm not upset about that. Occasionally when games release future DLC and make you "go back" to playing them if you want the full 100% - you may hate it and wish it never released. That's not the case for me in Graveyard Keeper. I'm going to be alright with revisiting this world after a few months or whenever the bell tolls for me to return. That's a pretty great compliment for a game I spent the entire first 2 paragraphs bashing. That'll do donkey, that'll do. Panda Score: 7.48 / 10 Edited January 18, 2023 by realm722 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassylvania Posted November 7, 2020 Share Posted November 7, 2020 4 hours ago, realm722 said: In the words of the immortal @Cassylvania - "farming sim games are like crack for me." has never applied so truthfully as it does to my experience with this game. I never said that. ? Glad to see someone shares my love-hate relationship with this game. It's amazing to me that Breaking Dead is NOT part of the main game. That's like Happy Days without the Fonz. Why would you do that? I'm really surprised how quickly you burned through that game. I had to go back and check my time to platinum and it's actually even faster. Maybe it just felt like a 100+ hour game. I think you just lose track of time because you're always chasing something, like you said. It really does embody all the good (and bad) things of farming sim games. I hadn't heard about the upcoming DLC. I wouldn't mind revisiting that game if it ends up with more trophies. Stranger Sins might be a bit of a slog once you get to it. I think I did it alongside the main game. Nice job! Always enjoy reading your reviews. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realm722 Posted November 7, 2020 Author Share Posted November 7, 2020 (edited) 3 hours ago, Cassylvania said: Glad to see someone shares my love-hate relationship with this game. It's amazing to me that Breaking Dead is NOT part of the main game. That's like Happy Days without the Fonz. Why would you do that? I'm really surprised how quickly you burned through that game. I had to go back and check my time to platinum and it's actually even faster. Maybe it just felt like a 100+ hour game. I think you just lose track of time because you're always chasing something, like you said. It really does embody all the good (and bad) things of farming sim games. I hadn't heard about the upcoming DLC. I wouldn't mind revisiting that game if it ends up with more trophies. Stranger Sins might be a bit of a slog once you get to it. I think I did it alongside the main game. Nice job! Always enjoy reading your reviews. So I was actually curious enough to look and do some research on it. Apparently, on PC the "Breaking Dead DLC" is free for Steam users... but console players of course have to pay for it. That's honestly pretty scummy given how much of a back-breaker not having it in the game is. You still have to pay for "Stranger Sins DLC" - but another weird thing I found is I was browsing around on the subreddit of this game and man, some of the posts you will find highly upvoted on there do not talk kindly about it. Apparently the game can be extremely buggy and absolutely break for some people to the point where they can't continue playing. There's bugs with the DLC where if you reach a certain point it conflicts with the main game and then you're completely screwed. There's also complaints now about somehow this game can have 3 DLC expansions after release yet they can't play bother to fix some bugs that have been in the game since it's release. I'm fortunate enough that I managed to avoid basically any bugs at all in my entire playthrough - and certainly didn't encounter any major ones. I couldn't begin to imagine how frustrating that might be given how this game is though. While also doing some research - I came across some more hatred for this game from over 2 years ago accusing it of being "rushed and unfinished" due to never attaining access to "The Town" and such. I dunno if I'd go that far. This game has a lot to it as is - and I think it's an example of why all those who dedicate money to early access games should never expect the game to fulfill all of it's promises. If you're not satisfied with the current product, don't contribute money "in hope it reaches your expectations". I also discovered via their website that Lazy Bear Games is actually a Russian developer close to St. Petersburg! For whatever reason I found that really funny. After learning that - I absolutely feel the "Russian game design" reflecting upon my time. I feel like games by developers that far East in Europe don't care for holding the players hand and typically have little care for very in-depth tutorials, and the certainly don't mind making players grind/wait. They threw you out to sea and expect you to swim. Something like Pathologic if you've ever heard of it. But it appears it's somewhat backfired for them since their latest release "Swag and Sorcery" in 2019 (year after Graveyard Keeper) ended up with mixed reviews on steam due to just how much of a grind it demanded of players. I hope they improve in that department - they're a fun unique studio that seem to commit the same mistakes over and over again. Thank you for the compliments and right now you're in the midsts of playing 2 of my favorite games! Hope you get back to Slay the Spire soon and I adore The Messenger so I hope you find it's wit as enjoyable as I did! Edited November 7, 2020 by realm722 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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