Tales of AndresLionheart's backlog

[AndresLionheart]

@Honor_Hand Oh, man... it's always sad to hear that things are only getting worse =/. Still, I can't believe you got the chance to buy a PS4 =o. That's awesome!

 

I don't think inFamous Second Son was a good first game, but what could I've done? The only other options at the time were probably shit like Knack and some generic shooters. The game is okay, so I guess you won't get any surprises since you already played the PS3 ones.

 

I play every smash for 1000s of hours. Brawl was no exception. Aside from that infuriating tripping it was a fun game. I actually like Brawl more than I like Melee, which is usually the one that people always lick the balls of.

I think people complained a bit about Smash 4 challenges being too hard so they simplified them a lot. Even from this game I read of people having trouble against some Legend level Spirits and such. Smash is one of those games I'm naturally very good at because I've been playing and improving since 1999, but for someone that is just starting now I can see it not being such a cakewalk.

I watched back that Classic with Pit and holy shit was I passive in there... conjunctivitis amde me a scrub, lol. Now that I'm healthy again I upped my reactions a lot more and I'm much more active and aggressive. I played a few matches online and I haven't lost with any non-laggy as fuck match, lol.

 

I think this is the first IdeaFactory game I play, so I didn't have any knowledge of their stardards of quality. I always tend to go with the ones with long, black hair and nicely balanced body shapes. I'm also cool with the big breasted ones, but they usually have bewitching personalities that makes them feel like a bit too much.

Noire is fairly simple, she is mostly a regular girl but has some tsundere traits. The other girls make fun of her for not having many friends, but she seems to do alright in friends if all the other 7 girls are supposed to be her friends.

 

Typing and putting together the review took like an hour or two and I did it while editing a few videos. Last Saturday my friend came over and we recorded more Bloodborne. I have been trying to get all the editing ready to be completely free tomorrow to start with a new game if I finally receive it... it was supposed to get here on Decemeber 28th but then got pushed to January 2nd -.-

 

Again, congrats on finally treating yourself with a PS4. Curse of the Moon can be beaten in 2 to 3 hours, so feel free to try it any time because it is not that much of a time commitment.

 

 

About Time and Eternity: I actually almost finished the game the first time I played it. I left it right before the final boss. I have already done most of the chores, like opening every chests and watching the side events. All that was left is finishing the game and then replaying it for the random foods the girls can cook since I probably missed some of the earlier ones because they stop making the shitty foods after certain level.

I think I abandoned it when I realized I missed some foods and I didn't want to play the game again.

 

 

Thanks for reading the shit, lol. Feliz comienzo de año para vos tambien =D.

 

[Honor_Hand]

24 minutes ago, AndresLionheart said:

@Honor_Hand Oh, man... it's always sad to hear that things are only getting worse =/. Still, I can't believe you got the chance to buy a PS4 =o. That's awesome!

It was actually a gift from a friend on this site. Very kind of him. If I had to buy it myself locally, I'd probably have to sell my apartment and a kidney for that

 

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I play every smash for 1000s of hours. Brawl was no exception. Aside from that infuriating tripping it was a fun game. I actually like Brawl more than I like Melee, which is usually the one that people always lick the balls of.

Lol That's a big true right there. Everyone seems to lose their pants over Melee, especially the most competitive crowd and we get it, it was a great game, still is, but sheesh, the new entries look and play so much better. Plus they have soooo much content.

 

Smash is probably the only fighting game series out there that I could probably hold my own against the CPUs in their max settings. Started with it on the N64 and I always loved to challenge myself against impossible odds. That's the only fighting game series I can say that, my dude. All others, not so much. I just barely make it against high-level CPUs. Other players online, yeah, no thanks lol.

 

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I always tend to go with the ones with long, black hair and nicely balanced body shapes. I'm also cool with the big breasted ones, but they usually have bewitching personalities that makes them feel like a bit too much.

 

We are on sync there Gotta love that long dark hair, right? Sexy x3

 

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I have been trying to get all the editing ready to be completely free tomorrow to start with a new game if I finally receive it... it was supposed to get here on Decemeber 28th but then got pushed to January 2nd -.-

 

Good luck with that man. Hopefully, it will be arriving tomorrow. ?

[ShinigamiSensei-]

@AndresLionheart Buen trabajo compañero, tienes varios juegos en tu lista que me gustaria completar durante este año, sobre todo en materia de RPGs (espero poder completar los dos Tales of que me he comprado con las ultimas rebajas jeje). Un saludo y buen 2019 para ti 

@Honor_Hand Cuando tengas preparado tu propio checklist avisame, yo tambien estoy pensando en hacer lo propio en un futuro. Buen 2019 y espero que las cosas mejoren este año por alli 

 

[Honor_Hand]

10 minutes ago, fabiansc83 said:

@AndresLionheart Buen trabajo compañero, tienes varios juegos en tu lista que me gustaria completar durante este año, sobre todo en materia de RPGs (espero poder completar los dos Tales of que me he comprado con las ultimas rebajas jeje). Un saludo y buen 2019 para ti 

@Honor_Hand Cuando tengas preparado tu propio checklist avisame, yo tambien estoy pensando en hacer lo propio en un futuro. Buen 2019 y espero que las cosas mejoren este año por alli 

 

Jeje, ya tengo uno, pero tengo como 3 meses que no lo actualizo. Esta por aca. El link tambien esta en mi signature.

 

Muchas gracias por los buenos deseos hermano Suerte cuando te sientes a hacer tu checklist. Despues como que cuesta mantenerlo actualizado jaja

[AndresLionheart]

3 hours ago, fabiansc83 said:

@AndresLionheart Buen trabajo compañero, tienes varios juegos en tu lista que me gustaria completar durante este año, sobre todo en materia de RPGs (espero poder completar los dos Tales of que me he comprado con las ultimas rebajas jeje). Un saludo y buen 2019 para ti 

 

Los RPGs suelen ser una inversion grande de tiempo, pero eso es lo que me gusta de ellos =P. El unico problema es que a veces estoy interesado en algun juego que va a salir al poco tiempo, por lo que no puedo empezar nada largo a menos que lo abandone por un tiempo para jugar a lo otro. No me sienta bien lo de dejar algo por la mitad para terminarlo despues, por lo general termino abandonandolo porque me olvido que estaba haciendo y como jugar bien xD.

 

3 hours ago, Honor_Hand said:

Jeje, ya tengo uno, pero tengo como 3 meses que no lo actualizo. Esta por aca. El link tambien esta en mi signature.

 

Muchas gracias por los buenos deseos hermano Suerte cuando te sientes a hacer tu checklist. Despues como que cuesta mantenerlo actualizado jaja

 

=O hay bastante trabajo metido en ese thread. Actualizarlo puede ser mucho trabajo, pero tambien puede hacerse mas simple. Hay que tratar de no abarcar tantas cosas. Por ejemplo yo solo vengo y escribo que me parecio lo ultimo que jugue. Como solo suelo jugar 1 o 2 juegos a la vez es bastante simple ir actualizando de a poquito.

Vi en el tuyo que hablabas no solo de juegos, si no de los Anime que estabas viendo y tu opinion sobre Crunchyroll jaja. Iba a comentar por alla, pero creo que quien deberia revivir el thread sos vos, asi que por ahora no pongo nada. Por lo menos me puse a seguirlo para cuando ocurra algo =P.

[AndresLionheart]

Digimon World: Next Order

Game Difficulty: 4/10

Platinum Difficulty: 5/10

Time to Platinum: 95 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

Digimon World on PS1 could possibly be my most played game on that console, either that or Final Fantasy VIII. I knew of this game since it was announced but I didn't feel like playing. One day playing Secret of Mana with my friend we talked about it for a bit and that conversation stood with me for a while. Fast forward to the end of December when I decided to give it a go after seeing there were no missables =P.

 

This is one of those low budget anime games. It reuses a bunch of content, has very little voice acting and subpar graphics. Compared to the one on PS1, this one is missing a few things.

The older game had this air of mistery, of magic. This thing of what the heck was on the next section of the map. Back then exploring a new area already felt like an acomplishment because you had to train your Digimon for hours or it wouldn't stand a chance. It was scary to venture into unknown territory, but there was this drive to know what could come next. On top of that you would hear romours and stories from other characters, things like "they say if you stay on the beach at 9pm a water beast will appear", so you remember that and want to check what it was all about.

Somehow Next Order can't capture these things. Areas feel disjointed and Digimon that you need to recruit to improve the city (which also was the main objective of the original game) have the stupidest requirements, for example: "Ikkakumon said I was weak so I'm mad at him. We used to play in X area", so you go to X area to talk to the other dude and he is like: "He misunderstood, I only told him he could keep improving his technique. Please tell him I'm sorry", so you go back, everything is alright and they both join the city. Others may just fights, and other may require some kind of fetchquests. There may be an interesting one here and there, but I can't even come up with one from the top of my head.

 

The battles are pretty much the same as the original, but this time having 2 digimon. An improvement over the old game is that Dgimon do not have a "Brain" stat anymore, so you can give them orders without having to waste time training an otherwise worthless stat.

There isn't much control over what's happening. Ordering them to use specific moves is a waste of Order Power (OP), which is also used to pull off each digimon special technique, so in the end you just cheer them on (which gives more OP if timed correctly) until you can order them to use said move. The only other thing to keep in mind is using the Defend command when the enemy uses their special, and maybe an item here and there.

That's also pretty much what it was in the original game. It's not deep at all, and I can see a lot of people getting super bored with it quickly. I, for some reason, didn't mind it, it was a good game to drink beer while playing.

But my main issue with the battles is the AWFUL balancing. The damage formula used completely skyrockets from no damage to insane damage too fast. You are either too weak and can barely stand, or you annihilate the enemy. In the odd case when your digimon and the boss are at equal strenght it can be enjoyable, but I had almost no battles like that, maybe 1 or 2.

Then there is ExE fusion, a thing that Mega Digimon can do once a day. It fuses them, adding their stats and giving them a little extra boost, so 2 Digimon with about 5000 stats can get to the cap 9999 easily. This also trivializes everything. You can be completely destroyed by a boss, like I was for the boss of chapter 3, who could kill my dudes in 3 hits, and then all of a sudden be so strong that you can leave the controller down and watch your fused mons win for you. The worst part is that towards the end you pretty much need this to fight against anything, be it story bosses or any strong recruitable Digimon.

In the post-game it is possible to extend a Digimon life indefinitely, so there I was able to max out both my Digimon and destroy anything without any issues, since now I had with me 2 Digimon that were as strong at the previously mentioned fusion (stats can't go any higher than 9999, and 99999 for HP and MP, so fusing becomes useless).

 

While I'm all for difficulty, this is a game I recommend playing on Easy. Battles are still the same and all that changes is that you gain double the stats per training session. With Digimon having a certain life span having to waste less time training is not only good for your time, but for the digimon as well. That was usually a problem with the original game, in which 80% of the mon life span was wasted on training, leaving little time to explore new areas. There is no reason to play on Normal unless you just want to waste your fucking time, lol.

 

Evolving you Digimon was also improved by streamlining it and showing the player what stats are needed for each evolution. These start obscured but are slowly unlocked through different means. Still, with internet at our hands now I just simply used a complete list to make it easier.

 

Recruiting Digimon to the city unlocks a bunch of useful things, like the ability to lock evolutions you do not want in case you meet a bunch at the same time, extending Digimon lives with food, item shops, better training tools, side activities, etc. Everything starts very shitty and becomes much better later, allowing the use of a lot of quality of life improvements.

 

Music is super meh, and as I already mentioned, graphics are sub par at best. At least the female avatar looks cute.

 

Lastly, the story is, as expected, very simple. There is a mistery, then the guy doing the bad things appears, then a twist and then it ends. I have to give it points for making the initial antagonist Machinedramon, who was the main enemy in the original game.

One thing that really got on my nerves is how everyone pronounces the name of the digimon Machinedramon. They say "machine-DREHmon" it sounds like 2 words and since there are many of them whenever anyone brings it up they add a "the" before it, making it sound like thay are talking about some machine that is called Dremon. Digimon names which end in "dramon" have a "dra" because they are some sort of dragon, that's why that "dra" should be pronounced like the one in "dragon"...

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

It's an Ultra Rare, not for difficulty, but for having a pretty long grind at the end. I finished the game, and all the post-game, with my 4th generation of Digimon, which then I used to grind for all the materials, cards, money and items I was gonna need to complete the collectable-type trophies. It was long, repetitive and boring, probably 5 days playing 6 hours or so, just doing the same fucking thing.

After that it was time to get 200 different Digimon! Since I was on my 4th generation I had about 40 Digimon so far. Normally you would need to train your mons in certain stats and other requirements for them to evolve, on top of having to wait till they are old enough, but thanfully there are a bunch of evolution stones that can bypass all of that and evolve them right away, regardless of anything, be it age, the digimon they are, age, anything. That was a godsend since there are also items that can shorten the Digimon life, meaning you only need to get to Rookie level, evolve them with stones to Champion, then Ultra, then Mega and then maybe DNA Mega (although there aren't many of those). Stones for megas can't be bought, but the EX dungeons drop out a bunch of different ones, plus some recuited digimon also gift some. Most stones for Champions and Ultras can be bought in the city. With all that I had more than enough for the 200 Digimon.

 

The only other problematic part is the Colosseum. Normally it wouldn't be a problem but some fights have requirments, like a certain type of Digimon or being at a certain evolution stop or below. Fights have a time limit, so you cannot just tank forever with items, dealing enough damage is a requirement.+

The most notorious one is #51, which requires using Rookie Digimon. There is only one Rookie that can use high tier attacks, Lucemon, so you need 2 of those. What I did was train them until they were at the age to evolve, using Seraphimon food which can improve stat gains a lot, and then used all the Stat Chips I gathere throughout the game. Normal ones give 1000 HP or MP, or 100 in one of the other stats, and then small ones give 1/4 of that. With all that shit I had these Rookies with massive stats who destroyed that fight, and then even proceeded to win some of the other fights that actually allowed Megas. After that one there are other 2 with type requirements, so I made sure to evolve the Lucemon into these types, taking advantage of all those massive stats already built.

 

There is a bit of planning and a lot of grinding, so this plat deserves its rarity.

 

The Media Corner

 

Since the game is a lot about running around forever and training, there isn't much interesting to show. You also cannot leave any important fight for the platinum pop. That's why I ended up popping my plat with one of the shitties trophies, making a mistake while raising your Digimon, lol.

I wanted to at least show something, so here is a fight that was probably the most difficult one (at least until you max out stats and everything becomes a joke). It shows 2 classic digimon fighting and an ExE fusion to finish it =).

 

Imperialdramon requires winning against him 3 times in a row, so you cannot cheese him with an ExE because that can only be done once per day, that's why it's not a easy as all the other bosses.

[AndresLionheart]

Bloodborne

Game Difficulty: 6/10

Platinum Difficulty: 7/10

Time to Platinum: 50 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

Aaah... the first Soulsborne game of this guy, a genre I was always mildly interested in but never gave it a go. I had this game for a long time because I once found it for $20 and decided to buy it since I heard only good things about it. Last year on my birthday gathering we were talking about Dark Souls, I mentioned I had Bloodborne and one of my friends immediately asked me if we could play it (he had gotten into the genre not that long ago with Dark Souls). Next time he came over we started it.

 

We did record the whole thing, which I'm in the midst of uploading. If anyone wants to check it here is the playlist to the whole playthrough (should be all published by the end of May). As always, it has us talking in spanish.

 

I have a bunch of experience in fast paced action games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta but that didn't help much with this game. I had heard it was hard but I also know most people who complain about difficulty in games tend to just be terrible.

Starting out I had a pretty easy time with the area, although we got lost and couldn't found the first shortcut. I died to the first boss and went back to square one. I was a bit annoyed by this, but minutes later we found this shortcut and never had much trouble again.

 

Killing things feels really good. Movement and attacks have a really nice "weight" to them, so any encounter with a strong foe is a fun experience. That is at least when you understand the nuance of combat, especially the aggressive one found in Bloodborne.

In the beginning I would play defensively by dodging back and trying to counter attack, but that is not how you do it in here. What the good hunter does is take the risk and try to utilize the iframes from dodge animations to move through attacks, ending in a more favorable position to punish. This "dance" style of battle feels great when you learn to read enemies movements, which at first feel random but in reality there are always small tells for the player to anticipate what to do. Using the firearm to parry enemies to open them up for visceral attacks is something we didn't do for a while. It feels awesome to land viscerals on enemies, too.

I wish someone told me that from the start, though, since Father Gascoigne, the first required boss, really punishes the player for acting defensive. We ended up cheesing him with ranged items but he did kill us 7 times (I died 4 times and my friend 3, who then killed him on his 4th attempt), this ties him with another one for the most times we died to a boss, with the other being the last boss from the DLC, Orphan of Kos, considered one of the hardest bosses in the whole genre. This comparison can tell you how much of a test this first required boss is.

I do think such a difficult boss for a beginner is there for a reason, though. I think it is so that someone who cannot beat him doesn't waste his time with the rest of the game, as a sign that it is gonna be too much for them. In other words, he is the Gatekeeper of this game.

 

Another thing I would hear about these games is "that feeling", the one you get after overcoming a tough fight. Sadly, I didn't experience that. The closest I got to that was with this previously mentioned Orphan of Kos, which took me 4 attempts (with other 4 attempts by my friend). All that was on the span of 45 minutes, not even close to the time I have spent to kill some bosses in Mythic difficulty in World of Warcraft, with some taking over 250 attempts...

I've read horror stories from other players who got stuck for days or weeks on some bosses we killed first try or in 30 minutes, so something tells me some players don't really learn the nuance of combat and just go at it until they get lucky or something.

Curious about how other people play I did watch a few playthroughs which showed me that I wasn't so wrong. They would spam dodges, panic a lot when their health was getting low, forget half of the things they could do or just tunnel vision on something and stop paying attention to the rest. Still, I find it pretty entertaining to watch new players fail and learn.

What did made me feel great a lot of times was finding new shortcuts back to the lanterns. There is nothing shittier than exploring an area for an hour to then die before opening that one door that can make the trip back a thing of 1 minute.

 

The map design is one of the best aspects (except for Forbidden Woods, fuck that shitty ass open area filled with poisonous snakes). It is designed in a way to connect everything, and each area has its own little details to use as guide for someone who can create a mental map. That is a skill I didn't know was a skill. While playing with my friend I would always have to guide him because he would get lost so often. Even in common areas we traversed several times he would still sometimes make the wrong turn.

 

The bosses are one of the best parts of this game. They have awesome designs, ranging from badass hunters, like Father Gascoigne and Lady Maria, to grotesque... things, like The One Reborn and Ebrietas. And all of them are accompanied with amazing music tracks, turned even more amazing due to the fact that most of the game has no music, making each boss fight feel even better. The DLC bosses especially have some of the best tracks.

But, better than talking about each boss it would be better to show, so I will add a boss compilation with live commentary (in spanish) of our first kills. My favorite boss was probably Ludwig, the Holy Blade.

 

Graphics are almost all grey and brown, but it goes great with the depressing tone the whole world has. There is death and despair everywhere, and the player knows nothing of why anything that happens happens. The main story has almost no exposition or explanations, most of these are left for the player to find out by finding notes and reading item descriptions, something we really didn't do that much. I'm sure the lore is intricate and shit, but I'm not the type of player to go out of his way to read that kind of thing.

 

In the end, I did like this game a lot, so much that I actually also played a lot of it again with another character to try out another weapon. In this second run through the game I destroyed almost every single boss on the first try, only dying to 2 of them once or twice, proof that the experience as a player is worth much more than the experience points in the game.

I will for sure be trying out the Dark Souls series, and the soon to release Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, at some point.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

Knowing this is a "hard" game anyone would expect a hard plat, but nope, it is actually extremely straight forward with very few missable. One is very easy to miss but can be gotten in NG+ in 5 minutes, and the other could lock you out of an ending but is VERY difficult to fuck up. All 3 endings can be done in a single playthrough thanks to back up saves.

 

The trophy most commonly seen as the hardest one requires doing a bunch of extra dungeons called Chalice Dungeons. There is a specific route to do the bare minimum, which is 7 dungeons. It is not that bad until one called Defiled Pthumeru, which cuts the player HP in half. This means a bad move could spell death. People hyped this one a lot too, but we ended up finishing it in 1 hour and 10 minutes.

The dungeons overall aren't that bad but become very boring because they all utilize the same few preset rooms and take longer than needed due to the need to explore for materials to create them. Beers and a friend are recommended to avoid boredom.

 

There are a bunch of optional areas with some of the best bosses in the base game, so going for the platinum enhances this game.

 

The Media Corner

 

As mentioned before I will attach a compilation of almost all the bosses. The ones I cut are those from Chalice Dungeons that were too weak or repeats from either the main game or other Chalice Dungeons. The only important repeat is one from Defiled Pthumeru and the final boss because we both killed it once for different endings.

In the spoiler tag I will add timestamps along with some insight on our experience.

 

Popping the Platinum by destroying the true final boss for the last ending

 

 This is the last part of our complete Let's Play. Starting from 33:11 the Platinum pops and we discuss our thoughts on the game (in spanish).

 

A compilation of our first kills of most of the bosses (with spanish commentary. More info on each boss in the spoiler tag below)

 

Spoiler

A = Andres, H = Hache

 

Timestamp, Boss | Deaths |

 

0:00 Cleric Beast | 1A, 2H | First boss we encountered. I got to him at the initial level and died kinda stupidly. Later after some levels Hache got him down pretty easily.

 

5:42 Father Gascoigne |  4A, 3H | I already talked about this guy in here. He was a good challenge for these 2 poor noobs just starting with the game. We laughed our asses off when Hache killed him by spamming Molotovs to not have to deal with the extremely aggressive phase 3.

 

9:04 Blood-starved Beast | 3H | We kinda fucked up on this one and summoned an in-game NPC without even knowing wtf we were doing. We didn't even try it solo, so this one kinda sucked. I later killed this solo in an awesome fight on my other character.

 

13:39 Vicar Amelia | 1H | One that a lot of people have trouble with but we found very easy... We had just found this item to block enemy healing, which makes this fight not a problem.

 

17:34 The Witch of Hemwick | 2H | This one kinda gave me the creeps. The annoying witches can grab you and do this horrible animation where they try to gouge out your eyes... ewwww.

 

22:34 Darkbeast Paarl | 1A | Just like with Blood-starved Beast, we summoned some NPC without even thinking. He did help a shitton, though. Later on the other character I had an amazing solo duel with this thing. Still, as a noob during our first playthrough I think this one would have taken me a while because aggressive dodging is required for success.

 

25:51 Shadow of Yharnam | 2A | I kinda hate this one because I took forever to act. I was being exceedingly cautious, which made the fight last forever.

 

38:17 Rom, the Vacuous Spider | 0A, 1H | Hache has a fear of big spiders, so he couldn't concentrate on his first attempt and died. With what I saw from him playing I could pretty easily come up with a good strategy to one shot it.

 

45:32 The One Reborn | 3H | We didn't know you can go up some stairs to kill the bitches casting fire balls and buffing the boss, so Hache just toughed it up and still beat it fairly easily.

 

50:15 Martyr Logarius | 0A | Another one I kill very slowly. We didn't find the lamp in this area, and even with it the run back is super long. I didn't want to have to run back up here so I played very safely and barely got to one shot it.

 

1:01:51 Amygdala | 0H | You can come to this area way early in the game. By the time we got here we were so strong that this thing got completely destroyed.

 

1:04:56 Celestial Emissary | 0H | Shit boss.

 

1:07:59 Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos | 0H | Hache played like a fucking beast in this one. He destroyed her even though we were using a type of weapon the boss is very resistant to. This boss is also considered the hardest one from the base game (not counting chalices).

 

1:12:13 Micolash, Host of the Nightmare | 2H | Shit boss. Chase him around until he corners himself. The problem is that on the last part of the fight he has this bullshit spell that sometimes deals little damage and sometimes kills you instantly. That's why Hache died twice...

 

1:18:32 Mergo's Wet Nurse | 0H | For the last storyline boss before the final one, this is an extremely easy fight. It seems like this boss has a terrible time tracking the player and ends up attacking the air half of the time.

 

1:25:09 Ludwig, the Holy Blade | 1A | First DLC boss, and probably my favorite. It has 2 very distinct phases that encompass the 2 main types of foes, the aggressive as fuck beast, and the nuanced sword fighter. All accompanied by awesome music.

 

1:29:34 Living Failures | 0H | Shit boss like Celestial Emissary.

 

1:34:09 Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower | 0H | Another great fight accompanied by fantastic music. She is a bit too easily parried, though.

 

1:38:47 Orphan of Kos | 3A, 4H | The one we celebrated the most after beating. Not only because it was actually difficult, but also because it was 6am and we wanted to go sleep. I could say a lot about this one but it is better to watch it.

 

1:45:34 Laurence, the First Vicar | 0A, 2H | One that I'm surprised a lot of people have a very hard time with. I easily one shotted it after watching Hache fail twice. I kinda called him out for sucking, too, lol.

 

1:50:56 Abhorrent Beast | 2A | What an ass. This guy has a move that is triggered when you use an item, so you have to keep that in mind when trying to heal. He attacks very often, leaving small room to counter attack, and a bunch of his attacks create tornadoes that give them a wider hitbox. Pretty strong foe I have to say.

 

1:55:15 Keeper of the Old Lords (Defiled) | 7H | Don't let the death counter make you think this dude is hard, it is just that a single mistake can kill you. Hache found out a cheesy strat to parry him constantly. After that he killed him right away.

 

1:57:34 Watchdog of the Old Lords (Defiled) | 5H | I told Hache a safe strategy but it took him a while to learn to read this dog's charge attack, which kills you instantly.

 

2:04:33 Amygdala (Defiled) | 1H | A lot of people's worst nightmare. I told Hache what to do for the last phase and he got this one no problem. That one death was super early on the first attempt, so it barely even counts.

 

2:12:16 Pthumerian Descendant | 2H | Kind of annoying dude if given distance. He can throw his sickles which are hard to see. Very easy to parry because he likes to keep attacking even when you move away.

 

2:15:19 Bloodletting Beast | 2H | Eeeeh, I'm not even sure about this one. He does a lot of shit so we just stay under it an attack. Not much of a strategy, lol.

 

2:20:12 Yharnam, Pthumerian Queen | 2H | A pretty cool reward for all the trouble to get to her. The fight is not that hard but she does a lot of unique shit.

 

2:26:28 Gehrman, the First Hunter | 0A | The final boss. The problem is that we did so much more high level stuff before this that we ended up super buff, making the boss feel really weak. He has cool moves, though, and I no doubt believe he can give quite the fight if fought at the appropriate level. Although, he is bit easy to parry.

 

2:30:11 Gehrman, the First Hunter | 0H | Ditto.

 

2:33:04 Moon Presence | 0H | Lol, this guy got completely obliterated in 24 seconds. It was very funny.

 

Edited May 17, 2019 by AndresLionheart

[Honor_Hand]

Sounds like Andres is waaaayyyy too good at this kind of games Read your whole thoughts on the game and the summary of each boss (I'm avoiding the videos because I'm getting this game soon and I don't want any more visual spoilers) and you barely died at all man. Not sure how exactly this game is but I found myself struggling a lot with Demon's Souls and Dark Souls back in the day. Not only with the bosses but just trying to traverse the environments proved to be a challenge in itself. I played alone though, so there is that. Dark Souls 2, I found it easier than the first 2 games and also noticed that it holds out your hand longer, so maybe this is a trend in the most recent games? I don't know. Even so, I still thought it was a decently challenging game.

 

Anyways, I'm in more for the cool and dark vibe, and the interesting creature and boss design, and from what I read, the game totally delivered on those. You should try the rest of the Souls series and maybe Nioh too. In fact, I'm planning to get Dark Souls III, Bloodborne, and Nioh (alongside some other games) in a week or two so, yeah, you can tell I love this genre. Probably not the best player around but heeeeeeyyyyy lol, I love them either way.

 

As always, it was great reading your thoughts on the game. Any idea on what you will be tackling next?

[AndresLionheart]

@Honor_Hand Traversing the areas didn't feel hard tbh, at least as long as you are not just running in and hitting stuff until they die. Luring enemies when there are too many strong ones together and simply positioning yourself in safe spots does it for most of the areas (except Fishing Hamlet in the DLC. That fucking place is so annoying).

Your dude is pretty mobile and can recover the last hit of damage taken by attacking back, so fighting against groups isn't that bad either (at least if your weapon is well suited for it, which both the ones we used were).

On the topic of weapons I think we picked one of the best ones without realizing it. If you want to try it out it's called Ludwig's Holy Blade. It has an extremely versatile moveset which makes it good for pretty much any situation.

Still, I'm not gonna lie, it felt pretty nice to get through this game smoothly after reading so much about the difficulty.

 

Man... the beasts especially have such great designs. Just with the first one, the Cleric Beast, you can get a feel for the nightmarish creatures you will keep finding during the game. You are picking the best choice by not looking at the bosses and finding them by yourself. Discovering them is part of the experience too.

 

My friend gifted me Dark Souls Remastered and I also bought 2 and 3 on a Steam sale, so I will be trying those at some point. I have had Nioh for a long time but something else always gets in the way, like Sekiro coming out today -.-

 

Anyway, for now I'm playing Devil May Cry 5. I though I wasn't going to plat it but after finishing it I saw the plat is not going to be as hard and frustrating as expected, so I'm gonna go for it. I'm also starting Tales of Innocence R tomorrow at work, on top of playing Tales of Vesperia DE with my friend so I have a lot going on at the moment, lol.

 

And btw, thanks for coming by as usual =)

Edited March 22, 2019 by AndresLionheart

[AndresLionheart]

Devil May Cry 5

Game Difficulty: 4/10 (on Devil Hunter)

Platinum Difficulty: 9/10

Time to Platinum: 40 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

I can't really say I'm a fan of the series, but I did play a lot of DMC4 back on the PS3. Before that I also played and finished DMC3, although I remember almost nothing of it.

With that said, as soon as I saw the reveal trailer for this game, I wanted to play it. I haven't touched DMC4 in over 10 years so seeing Nero and Dante do their shit made me feel nostalgia.

 

For an action game the story was interesting to watch unfold, although if you know anything about DMC you can see where it is going. The new guy, simply called V, is a great addition to the variety of gameplay styles. While Nero is the simple one with cool moves tied to timing-based presses of the L2, and Dante is the complicated one with a million types of weapons and variations, V uses disjointed attacks thanks to his summons. Griffin acts as the ranged weapon, while Shadow acts as the melee weapon. At first he feels a little bit weird, since you are supposed to stay away from enemies until it's time to finish them off, but eventually it clicks and he also gets to do some sick shit, just like Nero and Dante.

 

On a first playthrough it can take about 15 hours to beat the game, fairly standard for an action game. At least one more playthrough is heavily encouraged by the game since you keep unlocking new weapons and abilities up to the final fight. So if you want to really get to really use that stuff you have to replay the game =P.

One thing that became less frequent were crazy action cutscenes with the characters doing all sort of things to dispatch a bunch of enemies.

Nico, the van driver and creator of the Devil Breakers, coming from all sort places with her van when called was something I looked forward on every mission, lol. Too bad that stops at about mid game because of story reason (no, she doesn't die, she just can't reach the places you are in).

 

Of all 3 characters the one I enjoy the most is Nero. He may be simple, but nailing those Exceed timings to pull off more powerful moves feels amazing. I'm also a little biased toward him because I mostly got into the series with DMC4, where for the first time I used 2 fingers all the time on triggers instead of just moving the index back and forth. I was really happy to see that those skills I practiced 10 years ago for DMC4 translated really well into DMC5. Right at the start I was already pulling off the correct timing as if no time had passed =).

As a recommendation for Nero (and pretty much all characters), switching shoot to a shoulder button helps a lot. Personally my controls are: 

•  Melee Attack
•  Jump
•  Devil Breaker
•  Devil Trigger
•  Shoot
•  Target
•  Exceed
•  Devil Bringer
•  Break Away

 

This is the first game made in Capcom's RE Engine that I played (although I've watched full playthroughs of RE7 and RE2 Remake), and damn this engine does wonders. Everything looks great and it runs at 60fps on a base PS4 (it can drop here and there, but barely). All the destroyed city areas have so much depth that kinda goes to waste unless you just stop for a bit to check the environment.

That also brings me to my first complaint. The later half of the game takes place in the same type of enviroment, so area variety is lacking for sure. There is a story related reason why half of it is in that area but they could have shortened that part a bit to have some other places to visit.

Level design is much less annoying than in DMC4, though. When I started playing this I had this itch to replay 4 again, but after a while that itch disappeared because I remembered how annoying a lot of things in DMC4 are.

 

Music is great all around, especially the main theme, Devil Trigger. I must have listened to that one song dozens of times before the release of this game. During gameplay the default audio doens't allow to hear it most of the time, so lowering special effects a bit is recommended. Even with that since I got so much into fighting things I would concentrate on that and not even have time to enjoy the music, lol.

 

With this one Capcom has shown how any shithead company can redeem themselves by stopping the bullshit and making good games. I had lost all faith in them, but with Resident Evil 7, Mega Man 11, Resident Evil 2 Remake and now Devil May Cry 5, they have shown it's never late to go back to making games for players instead of for investors.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

Oh mah gerd... no doubt the hardest Platinum I have ever done. When I first saw the trophy list I thought I was not gonna do it because it looked too annoying. After finishing the game I was playing it on the next difficulty, Son of Sparda, and midway through it I was still questioning if I was gonna finish it or not. I actually almost dropped it that day. For some reason the following day I felt like playing some more, at least to finish that difficulty and complete as many of the other trophies as I could for a higher completion rating.

Then some strategies to deal with a few of the annoying things started to surface. I was also getting much better at it so I kept going.

 

So what's so hard about it? The trophy Worthy of Legend, which requires getting S-Ranks on all missions in all difficulties (it says except Heaven or Hell, but in that one you get S-Rank for just clearing the mission, so it would be exactly the same with or without it). Getting most S-Ranks is not that bad, except for this little difficulty called Hell and Hell. In HaH you die in one hit while enemies are the same as in Son of Sparda (equivalent to Hard). You are given 3 Golden Orbs that revive you, but technically you only get 2 because ressing 3 times cuts your score in half, making it impossible to get an S-Rank.

Some missions have enough points in regular battles to reach the 5500 required for an S-Rank in HaH, which is cool because it means you can get hit twice and still be fine. But a lot of other missions are not as well balanced and require to not get hit at all for a 2x bonus to score (along a 1.2x bonus for not dying). On top of all this, HaH has no checkpoints, so you cannot quit to PS4 menu, make a back up and try as many times as you want. Fuck it up enough and it is back to the beginning of the mission.

 

It can get frustrating, and boring at times, but overall I didn't have that much of a hard time. Some missions I got down on the first try, some others took up to 45 minutes.

I only rated this plat a 9/10 because there are cheese strats with all characters, although if I had to rank characters on how much they can cheese I would put it as Dante >>> V > Nero.

Dante has this weapon of mass destruction called Dr. Faust. It may look like a Michael Jackson hat, but it hides immense power within it. It's power does come at a cost, though. It uses up Red Orbs, the same currency used to buy everything else, and it uses a lot of them. Thanfully there is a very easy way to farm millions of orbs, so that is not a big deal. The cheesiest power of this weapon is a Meteor that can be charge up to 3 stages. You cannot move while it charges, so it sometimes requires smart tactics to pull off, but a fully charged one can 1-shot the final boss. A level 1 charge takes about 10 seconds and it kills most regular enemies in one hit, too. By charging it as enemies are spawning a lot of battles can be ended safely and instantly.

V's cheese comes from the use of camera manipulation. In DMC, enemies do not attack if they are not on screen. Since V's summons kinda home in on enemies you can go to a corner, point the camera at the wall and blindly attack enemies. While doing this you can also read V's book, which charges his Devil Trigger. After getting enough Devil Trigger you can summon Nightmare, who is really strong, draws aggro, makes your summons immune to damage and is immune as well.

With Nero you have a way to slow down time for a bit and a way to instantly kill some enemies, but his strats are a little more risky overall. So, you gotta git gud with him =)

Wasn't for those cheese strats I will have rated this a 10/10.

 

So, yeah, other than that, the rest of the trophies are nothing. Very standard stuff. It does feel nice to read some articles saying that this platinum is "almost impossible" and shit. Getting it done does feel like having a badge of honor =D.

 

The Media Corner

 

I will be uploading all my S-Ranks on Hell and Hell on my Youtube Channel. I fucked up a lot during them so I like to think it could be useful for people who think that they need to be gods at the game to complete this challenge. But for now I will post the moment the platinum pops, as usual.

 

Popping the Platinum. I do this with the final boss, so: spoilers!!

 

Edited March 31, 2019 by AndresLionheart

[AndresLionheart]

Dark Souls: Remastered

Game Difficulty: 7/10

Platinum Difficulty: 7/10

Time to Platinum: 40 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

Damn the platinum image is terrible for this one... it doesn't even have transparency. Anyway, this game was a gift from my friend Hache. He's been playing Dark Souls 2 lately and watching his gameplay made me want to try out this game.

Originally I wasn't going to get this platinum because it required 2 and a half playthoughs and finding a bunch of items here and there, with several being missable due to character sidequests.

The guide here in PSNP has a walkthrough to not miss anything. At first I thought it would spoil the game if I used it but it actually isn't as specific, so it's okay to follow it.

 

Since I played Bloodborne first I had a lot of bias toward it, however I'm not taking points away from this game since I understand it is way older.

 

I always heard of how well designed the areas in this game are, but to me it didn't feel like it. Places like Blighttown and Sen's Fortress are horrible, and places like Tomb of Giants, Duke's Archives, The Depths and New Londo Ruins all have their share of things that I feel are terrible design choices.

 

Blighttown is an awful series of little planks of wood and ladders, that alone isn't the problem, the problem are the stupid dudes in the dark that you cannot see at all until they shoot you. They are everywhere, have a fast shooting rate and their darts inflict the strongest poison in the game, a poison so strong that it eats your health and cannot be healed with normal poison antidotes. They could poison me with 2 darts, which could be my fault for not having poison resist, but not being able to heal that super strong poison normally seems more annoying than it should. I only got poisoned by them once and happened to have one single strong antidote that some tree dude dropped only once ever (I went through the are with the tree dudes several times and I have only seen that strong antidote drop once. They do drop the regular antidote very often, though).

 

Sen's Fortress has traps that you can see if you look for the tiles in the ground, but you can easily get surprised by dudes throwing electric spears from the darkness above while you are focused trying to avoid gigantic axes swinging around while you walk over an extremelly narrow path. Traps you cannot see coming are fine as long as it doesn't mean instant death, so having the first one of those dudes that throws those electric spears appear when you are walking on that narrow path is terrible design.

 

Tomb of Giants is badly designed because it requires a light source in a game with very limited choices. There are 3 light sources. One is a special helm that drops in an area you won't find normally. Another is a rare drop from non-respawning enemies in the area before the Tomb (there is a lootable one, but it is inside the Tomb, so it's unlikely you can find it without knowing it's there). And the last one is a magic spell sold by a really difficult to find NPC (on top of that it requires 14 Int to cast, so if you are not using an Int character you need to waste stats on it).

The good design choice would be to ensure the player gets one of those items the non-respawning enemies if all are killed, or have some kind of cheap, but less effective, light source for anyone to use.

 

Duke's Archives is fine overall, but it's filled with the annoyance of enemies shooting projectiles at you. I don't find that challenging, I just find it annoying.

 

In The Depths everything is very samey looking, so it is too easy to get lost. Also, it is filled with very narrow hallways that make fighting things annoying, not challenging.

 

New Londo Ruins is not bad, but for some unholy reason they decided to not put any bonfires around. Thankfully I beat the boss there on my first try, but just thinking about the run back annoyed me, lol.

 

I could probably think of some more things, but those are the most important. Someone could say I'm too easy to annoy or that I'm not man enough to deal with the bullshit, but I'm sorry, if I feel something is badly designed I'm allowed to criticize it as such.

 

While playing Bloodborne I read comments of a lot of people that played Dark Souls first that had a hard time with Bloodborne because it has no shields. It seems dodging is too hard, so the go to strategy for a lot of people was just hiding behind a shield and counter attacking. Because of that I wanted to play Dark Souls without a shield. I went for a low load build for the fastest roll and used the ring that improves the fast rool even further. Good thing I did that... I watched some people fight bosses with shield and damn it looks boring as fuck.

 

In term of boss fight I was disappointed almost all the time. The only ones I liked were Smough and Ornstein, Sif and Gwyn. The rest are just terrible disappointments.

I felt especially bad for Gaping Dragon and Seath. They have great designs but are waaaaay to easy to beat. And that goes for most of the bosses, great looking creatures with terribly simple mechanics. Some are also in terrible arenas, like the Capra Demon and his 2 by 3 room...

I killed almost all the bosses without dying. The few deaths go to:

• 2 to Taurus Demon. I got stuck twice between him and the wall for dodging into him when he jump attacked.
• 1 to Iron Golem. I didn't realize there were no walls around (i thought there were little walls around, high enough to not fall off) so I rolled out and killed myself, lol.
• 1 to Nito. I got to his fight with 1 Estus left, which got wasted because you take a 40% hit in fall damage to get to his arena...
• 1 to Ceaseless Discharge. I went to that place early so he killed me in one hit. I then came back and cheesed him by staying in a hallway between the mountains and baiting him to attack with his arm.
• 1 to Quelaag. I got one shot by a very slow sword attack. Next attempt I just stood back and only attacked when the spider part barfed lava.
• 5 to Bed of Chaos. After I understood the "fight" I kept missing the branch in the hole, lol.
• 10 to Smough and Ornstein. I was leaving Ornstein second, who has a much harder second form than Smough (who is fucking free if left for last... All he gets is some electricity which only matters on his butt stomp attack). Dodging the 2 of them on the first phase wasn't that easy and then I would get to phase 2 where I could die to 2 attacks if I was at full health, problem is that I never reached that part with full health, lol. After 3 deaths to Ornstein's second form I learned all his moves and I killed him without getting hit. The other 7 deaths were before phase 2.

And that's it. The rest I killed on the first try. I didn't play the DLC, though.

 

Killing things is fun, but it feels less fun than in Bloodborne. Animations are much simpler and hits have almost no weight to them, so it doesn't feel as satisfying to hit things. Still, as I said before, I'm not taking points away from the game for things like that.

 

Music was mostly just alright. The boss music for some of the early bosses was laughable, though. It felt like a song for a boss in a beat'em up... I always thought of Dragon's Crown when I got to those bosses, lol. I did like the song against the final boss. Let's just say it surprised me.

 

One last thing I wanted to complain about is not being able to teleport to any bonfire after unlocking that ability. It is an inconvenience for no good reason. I understand this type of games were meant to echo the difficulty of old games on the NES, but inconvenience doesn't always mean difficulty.

 

Overall I liked this game, but not that much. And that's not because of people hyping it all the time, I simply don't find it as good as people say.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

Pointless extra playthoughs are pointless. As I mentioned before, I didn't want to get this plat because it seemed like too much of a hassle. I was also not gonna get it yet since I didn't feel like playing the whole thing again right away, I was gonna wait a bit. What ended up motivating me to finish it was that while looking which were the required bosses, I found out about a way to skip a bunch of the game and go straight to the final boss. Thanks to this I got the souls from the bosses I needed, which are all right before the part previous to the skip. This saved me soooo much time going though some shitty areas I didn't want to see again, lol.

Basically the skip let's you bypass the door that blocks the way to the final boss. Normally you need to beat this 4 Lords scattered around the game, but by warping from the fire in front of the door to Firelink and closing the game as soon as FireLink appears on screen the game puts you past the door when you load back in. I have no idea how that works, lol.

 

Getting the maximum upgrade of each type is very easy to complete thanks to backups. Just gather the minimum materials for one of the upgrade types and then revert back to recover the materials after the trophy pops.

 

Getting all spells, miracles and pyromancies takes more effort and a good bunch are missable so it is better to just follow a walkthrough for those. One miracle that sucked to get was this one that requires joining a covenant that only allows people with Faith of 25 or higher (this requirement can be lowered by helping people in co-op but I was not gonna pay $10 for PS+ and then have to wait to find people to help). Since my Faith was 11 and I didn't want to waste 14 levels on that shit I just farmed enough souls for 14 levels, went there, backed up the save file, leveled my Faith to 25, joined the thing, got the miracles, popped the trophy and reverted back to get my sweet souls and put them on more useful stats.

 

Yeah, a lot of cheesing via backups, but that's what happens when you game has a bunch of collectable trophies that cannot be completed in a single playthrough.

 

No media this time because I dind't feel like recording this game. I was gonna take a screenshot of my character because he looked like a damn Shadow of Yharnam from Bloodborne, but I forgot, lol. Also, the platinum popped by forging one last weapon, so that also wasn't interesting.

Edited April 11, 2019 by AndresLionheart

[AJ_Radio]

A week and two days is pretty quick for Dark Souls. I still need to play through this.

 

I already forgotten what a good build is.

 

I see you have the retro old school Castlevania games done for a platinum and Mega Man 11. There is nothing else on your trophy list that interests me and the rest I either already completed it or just not into it for now.

 

Those two Castlevania games don't look that bad although they can be considered a sort of Metroidvania. Mega Man 11 of course is another addition to one of my all time favorite classic game franchises, which is keeping to the tradition albeit with newer, improved graphics. I hear one trophy is difficult for a lot of people to get, but I already have some Mega Man games to play through (10 and Mega Man X Legacy Collection Vol 2) so I won't be getting Mega Man 11 for quite some time.

 

Other than that, not a bad trophy account. No trophy whore games as far as I can tell.

[AndresLionheart]

44 minutes ago, Spaz said:

A week and two days is pretty quick for Dark Souls. I still need to play through this.

 

I already forgotten what a good build is.

 

I see you have the retro old school Castlevania games done for a platinum and Mega Man 11. There is nothing else on your trophy list that interests me and the rest I either already completed it or just not into it for now.

 

Those two Castlevania games don't look that bad although they can be considered a sort of Metroidvania. Mega Man 11 of course is another addition to one of my all time favorite classic game franchises, which is keeping to the tradition albeit with newer, improved graphics. I hear one trophy is difficult for a lot of people to get, but I already have some Mega Man games to play through (10 and Mega Man X Legacy Collection Vol 2) so I won't be getting Mega Man 11 for quite some time.

 

Other than that, not a bad trophy account. No trophy whore games as far as I can tell.

I feel that any build in Dark Souls is fine.

I went for a light equipment build to 2 hand a weapon and dodge everything because I wanted to play it more like Bloodborne. Good thing I did because I later watched some gameplay using a shield and damn did it look boring.

 

The Castlevania games were fun. It was my first time playing those. I ended up liking Symphony of the Night so much that I played through it again 2 more times, although not to completion.

 

In Mega Man 11 I can see two trophies giving people trouble.

The easier of those would be beating Dr. Light's Trial. This is an endurance round through a series of stages with the bosses from Wily's castle every 10th floor. Still, I bet most people have the most trouble with the infamous boss on Floor 10.

The other one is the speedrun. This could be really hard but is mitigated severely by the fact that you can save between stages, so you only need to practice one stage at a time. The limit is one hour and it took me 47 minutes, iirc.

I'm not looking forward to X Collection 2, lol. I have to start that one some day I'm in the mood for some bs.

 

You have seen me here and there on topics about difficulty. I'm completely against trophy whore games.

I do play some weeb games with simple platinums here and there (except visual novels, which I'm actually fine with if the player doesn't skip everything just for the plat), but at least those can be considered games and I don't play them solely for the plat.

I really dislike the way trophy whore games destroy the meaning of a plat...

[AJ_Radio]

5 minutes ago, AndresLionheart said:

I feel that any build in Dark Souls is fine.

I went for a light equipment build to 2 hand a weapon and dodge everything because I wanted to play it more like Bloodborne. Good thing I did because I later watched some gameplay using a shield and damn did it look boring.

 

I don't mind the shield. I used it during my entire playthroughs of Demon's Souls. Had to do a second playthrough because there's an item you can't get until later.

 

Dark Souls definitely looks easier and I really hope they took out the shitty tendency crap from Demon's Souls. That was very annoying having to die several times in said location to get Dark Tendency for said item, but it remains one of my favorite PS3 games.

 

I'm not sure if you have to farm for materials in Dark Souls. Bloodborne seemed to be the most generous when it came to drops and Demon's Souls was pretty much rolling a pair of dice to get some of those "rare" items, including the dreaded Bladestone drop everybody complains about. I plan to make Dark Souls my 200th platinum, so a few tips could help. Although compared to some games I've played it shouldn't be that difficult to get through.

 

12 minutes ago, AndresLionheart said:

In Mega Man 11 I can see two trophies giving people trouble.

The easier of those would be beating Dr. Light's Trial. This is an endurance round through a series of stages with the bosses from Wily's castle every 10th floor. Still, I bet most people have the most trouble with the infamous boss on Floor 10.

The other one is the speedrun. This could be really hard but is mitigated severely by the fact that you can save between stages, so you only need to practice one stage at a time. The limit is one hour and it took me 47 minutes, iirc.

I'm not looking forward to X Collection 2, lol. I have to start that one some day I'm in the mood for some bs.

 

Mega Man 10 is probably the most difficult of them all that has a trophy list, due to Hard difficulty and Mr Perfect.

 

Honestly if any Mega Man was slightly easy then there's a problem. All of them have been fairly hard to a degree. Save states I feel are very necessary because those Mega Man games would of been extremely difficult to get through without them.

 

The first part of the X Collection was solid. I used to play those old games at my cousin's house back in the day on the SNES. X Collection 2 I'm a bit mixed on, but if anything it will offer some good anime cartoon cutscenes.

[AndresLionheart]

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Game Difficulty: 8/10

Platinum Difficulty: 7/10

Time to Platinum: 45 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

After Devil May Cry 5 and Dark Souls platinums I should have played something easy to chill for a bit and not have to think much. The problem was that Sekiro had already come out and I wanted to play it on par with my friend, so the relaxing game went to shit.

 

Sekiro is a game that starts really hard, way harder than Bloodborne or Dark Souls, mostly because there are more mechanics to the combat.

It all started okay, I was able to play through the tutorial and a good chunk of the beginning parts without dying at all (although I was being extremely cautious). Then, at a place called Hirata State, I found the first competent mini-boss, a spear wielding dude. It was at this point when the game wants you to utilize one of the 3 main countering abilities, the Mikiri Counter, which is used to avoid thrust attacks and step on the enemy's spear or blade. I only died once to that dude but that was because another 4 times I run away to heal and restore my healing items, so those could be counted as deaths as well. This means 5 "deaths" to a starting mini-boss, way more deaths than most Dark Souls or Bloodborne ACTUAL BOSSES. That set the mood and let me know that I was in for a sweet ride.

 

To explain the mechanics a bit, this game is about quick combat that wants you to constantly be clashing swords with your opponent. To encourage this stamina is gone, but blindly attacking will only get you through the most basic of basic grunts, the grunt above that one can already deflect your attacks and counter attack you.

There are 2 ways to kill people, lowering their HP to 0, or more commonly, breaking their posture for a fatal Deathblow. To facilitate this the defensive moves come into play. The most used one is Deflecting attacks, basically parrying by pressing defense (L1) with the correct timing, which reduces posture damage taken, damages enemy posture and a lot of the time makes the enemy stop attacking allowing to attack back.

Then comes the defensive maneuvers against unblockable attacks, like Sweeps and Thrusts. Sweeps cannot be blocked or deflected so the solution is jumping over the attack and pressing the jump again to deliver an aerial kick. Thrusts cannot be blocked, although they can be deflected, but the better option is the previously mentioned Mikiri Counter which stops the attack on the spot and generates a ton of posture damage. There are also Grabs... this suck because you can only dodge or run away, there is not a specific counter for them.

All this together is a lot during the first hours. I would often press the wrong counter because I couldn't react fast enough. I looked back at my gameplay from the beginning and I can't even watch it... I was so bad...

 

STILL! I kept at it and a few more hours in I was getting more comfortable. By the second samurai type mini-boss it was already clicking. Fighting that dude I understood that just like in a fighting game there are "turns". You can wail on the defending enemy to damage their posture but as soon as they deflect your turn is done and you should prepare to defend. This means deflecting their attack to take offensive turn again. Of course it gets more complicated than that since different enemies react a little different, like getting to do 2 attacks even though you deflect their first one, or doing a slow move with super armor so you still need to defend. All of those come with tells to always let the player know how to react.

 

On top of having a sword you also get ninja tools that are attached to the prosthetic arm. I didn't use most of them but I read they open up some cheese strategies.

My most used one was the Shuriken. It allowed me to keep the pressure going when enemies jumps away from me (thanks to a skill that allows for a very fast post-throw attack to close the gap). Other than that I used the Firecrackers to stun or interrupt a few bosses.

 

By the time I reached the first actual boss I was more than ready and comfortably beat him on the first try. From there on it was, mostly, smooth sailing. The boss that seems to be the first tall wall for most players to overcome I beat on my 2nd try, and the final boss that people ragequit over or take weeks to beat I got down on my 5th attempt, I was pretty happy with myself when I found out about other people struggles.

On the topic of bosses, the ones I liked the most are the human sized ones because I'm more into the "duel" feeling I get from those. Going face to face, pressuring the opponent to break their posture. I liked all of those. There are also several ones against creatures, which were nice to break the pace of the usual boss, except for an optional one at the very end of the game. That one was just... annoying. It felt like a Bloodborne reject dumped in this game that is not made to dodge around big enemies.

 

Anyway, the main reason I was interested in this game was because the combat looked awesome, and indeed it does. There is a lot of throat slicing and ninja action. For some reason I never got tired of hearing the sound of clashing swords or dudes getting Deathblown. I also loved that most main bosses get a unique final deathblow animation that was always a treat to see. I love when attacks have this "weight" to them and sound effects to emphasize that, which was the one thing that Dark Souls was completely missing.

 

The maps are overall smaller than previous FromSoft titles and Idols (this game version of bonfires) are eeeeverywhere. Sometimes you can find one, go down a few stairs or the side of a mountain and find another one.

Stealth is also a big part in exploration. Maps and enemy placement are designed for the keen ninja to find ways to go around completely undetected and kill everyone. Stopping for a bit to find out how to solve this "puzzle" was a fun thing to do. Of course you can also run in, kill a dude using stealth and then fight the other enemies, or run away until they forget you exist and kill the next one, but that is on the player to decide. Running past everything is also super easy thanks to infinite sprinting and the grappling hook, since very few enemies can follow you along tall areas.

The areas also loop on themselves but this isn't that big of a deal since Idols are everywhere and you can warp between them from the very beginning.

 

The story is way more straight forward than any other FromSoft game. It is told up front through dialog. Item descriptions with lore are still a thing but are mostly used for little tidbits of side things not talked much in the main story.

 

I've seen a lot of comments about this game not having customization and such. Personally I do not mind because going around with a sword is what I would normally do anyway but people that like to keep distance and cast magic are out of luck on this one. I feel most of the people that liked to play as mages in other games are also the ones that have the hardest time getting the hang of the combat. I always played these games up close and personal so I guess that helped me a bit to quickly get it.

 

On a final note: I'm on the camp that likes that there isn't co-op. It is not because I don't want people to play together, but because I like that people do not get an easy way out of a challenge, their either learn and overcome said challenge or quit. Reading the tales of people stuck on bosses fills my evil soul. I'm sorry =(.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

This list is pretty similar to Bloodborne. It doesn't ask for much, just to experience everything the game has to offer.

Having 4 endings could have made it a chore, but good old save backups fix that for the lazy player like me who wants the platinum but also wants to move to the next game in a reasonable time frame.

 

After most things are done the final trophy for everyone is more than likely gonna be acquiring every skill. Since I only played 2 playthroughs (avoiding almost everything on the 2nd one to rush to end game) I was still missing a bunch. With the most efficient way I could find to grind it took me a little under 3 hours to get the 41 points I needed. Not too bad really.

 

There is also a trophy for using the Resurrection mechanic for the first time. I wanted some bragging rights on my list so I decided to avoid using it for the whole platinum. Because of this I left it as the last trophy =P. To be honest, using it wouldn't have helped me that much anyway. I can recall like 2 times where it could have saved me 10 or so minutes since when I died during bosses it was usually because I run out of healing. Coming back to life with half health wouldn't have done that much.

 

The Media Corner

 

Since I popped the plat with a stupid trophy that video is not interesting (I killed myself by self poisoning in a safe area just for the lolz), so I will leave the dreaded final boss down here.

  

This was my 5th attempt so I was still learning the fight. It is not clean at all but it came out fairly nice anyway (except for the beginning of phase 2.... I was so out of rhythm at that point for some reason...). The killing blow was really cool, too.

 

 

And now I can finally go and play something chill to relax! Onward to the next game!

Edited May 16, 2019 by AndresLionheart

[AndresLionheart]

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom

Game Difficulty: 4/10

Platinum Difficulty: 3/10

Time to Platinum: 15 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

I have been craving some metroidvania games lately. A while back I saw this game and since it had nice looking sprite graphics I was interested. I didn't care much until I actually found out it was a metroidvania, though.

 

In terms of the genre it it is not the best example, not because it's bad but because there isn't much exploration. For most of the game you just follow a straight line from area to area, all of which conveniently end with a shortcut back to the start or to town. It doesn't open itself up to exploration until waaaay later into the last few hours of the game when you need to collect 3 treasures from ancient heroes (for which you are only given hints to where they may be) and then in the final area when you are required to forge the Gold Sword (for which there are 5 parts scattered throughout the world).

This way to build the world may have been completely in purpose due to the nature of the character powers. The first transformation cannot even use any equipment, then you get a snake that can crawl through tight spaces and climb on sticky walls and ceilings, then comes a frog that can finally use equipment, then a lion and finally a dragon that after finding a special charm can fly indefinitely, which basically renders a lot of the other traversal abilities pointless. I came back to some secrets after getting to the end of the game and I could ignore the intended mechanics and just fly to the collectable. All these little challenges help to learn the ins and outs of each transformation so building the world more open could have limited the use of earlier transformations even more.

 

There are a lot of puzzles in the way. I was surprised by this since I expected just something like Symphony of the Night or Super Metroid.

The same puzzle oriented style is used for bosses. Save for a few, most of them require some sort of little action puzzle to be solved on the fly to defeat.

 

I don't know if it is an issue with the translation or it is just the writing but the dialog seems off... I'm not completely sure why but I felt it was too simple or that nobody had any personality.

 

The music is pretty forgettable. Now that I think about it, other than the song in the first area I cannot remember any other at all...

 

What caught me off guard was the difficulty. I picked this game because I wanted a "walk in the park" but holy shit was I wrong. It is not hellish hard but I wasn't expecting to have to pay attention.

The problem with the damage aren't the enemies, the problem are the spikes and other environmental things. Those fuckers can deal like 4/5 of your health. I have never walked around with low health so often in a game, lol.

Then, sometimes you can get far into a dungeon with a platform based challenge to overcome. You enter the room with not that much health and step on a save platform so it saves you there with low health and now you have to tough it out until you beat that challenge. Always starting with full health after dying would fix this annoyance.

 

Overall it is a good time, however, it is one of those games I know I will never play again, unlike the previously mentioned Symphony of the Night and Super Metroid. Something is missing in this one so it cannot stand by those two.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

The one thing this one has over older metroidvanias is the convenience of the map. It marks everything with different icons and shows the % of each type of collectable found so far. On top of that there is an NPC that marks unfound collectables in exchange for a consumable that, initially, is only found in chests but is later made available infinitely through the item vendors.

With all that help one would think it completes itself, but no, not exactly. While you can have everything missing marked, you still need to find how you make that chest appear or how you get into that room. There were a bunch of times that I stood there walking back and forth trying everything because I couldn't figure out what the heck I was meant to do. A few I could find solutions online but information about this game is not that common so I couldn't find information on all of them.

 

You cannot save after beating the game so it is impossible to have an 100% map. The save file will forever say 99.9% completed ?.

 

The Media Corner

 

Since the final boss room holds the last 0.1% of the map I left the ending for last so I could end with the final boss fight. It was my first time going into the final boss, who is the epitome of a puzzle fight, so a lot of the time I'm just getting hit while finding out each solution.

 

Popping the Platinum by sucking at the final boss.

Edited May 25, 2019 by AndresLionheart

[AndresLionheart]

God of War

Game Difficulty: 3/10

Platinum Difficulty: 4/10

Time to Platinum: 40 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

I found a physical copy of this for cheap one day and I bought it because I knew it was a good exclusive. From first impressions I wasn't interested in this game because it looked too slow and the action looked less interesting than previous games with their more arcadey type combat. In the end I wanted to give it a shot since I knew it was also a short platinum, so there wasn't much commitment.

 

I have to say that I had a misconception of the combat due to the people being pretty bad at the game in the footage I watched. There is good variety to combat and you can do some cool shit, but all the gameplay I watched was so basic that it made the game look bad.

Usually I don't watch reviews or gameplay and just buy the games I want to play. This was an exception because I wasn't too interested in it from the start.

 

Even with all that said, it is a good and nice looking game, but what I got it was what I expected from the budget given. I really don't see the "Game of the Year" material, it didn't mindblow me at all.

The graphics are amazing, so amazing that at times it had me unconfortable with how detailed Kratos' skin and armors look, lol.

The way the story unfolds and the way Kratos slowly reveals his past to Aterus was pretty cool as well. When tidbits of information on Kratos' come up I had this slight feeling of nostalgia from playing the PS2 games (and the PS3 one, but that is still too new to feel nostalgia for =P). The only thing I would change about the story is that there should have been at least a few minutes of Kratos and Atreus sharing some time with Faye. That way we could have felt something when she died.

 

There is a lot of exposure about Norse mythology, so much that I was pretty lost with all the weird ass names with weird symbols on the letters. The important part is that it is set up to have 2 other games to make another trilogy.

 

Exploring new areas was fun because there are little puzzles to solve everywhere, which is something I really like in this kind of games. However, a big problem arises at the end of the game when everything is already explored: fast ravel sucks ass. It is not because it takes pretty long to load, it is because you cannot access it simply from the menu. The way it works is you have to get to some gates that then allow you to go to any other gate. That would be fine normally, but there are too few of these doors in certain areas. I wasted so much time simply having to run all the way to one of them, and if I got lost somewhere for some reason I had to find my way around when I could have simply clicked a thing on the world map. It is very cumbersome for no apparent reason.

 

Overall I had a pleasant time. Atreus development as a character and Kratos' redemption is what will drive this trilogy forward. Needless to say, I will be playing the next ones, I want my duels with Odin and Thor.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

And here is where my problems with the fast travel system become more noticeable. The platinum doesn't require 100% of everything but it does of a few things, like all the artifacts (little collectables scattered around the world) and Odin's Ravens (green ravens that let Odin see around the world). Having to backtrack in areas that are blocked off at the end of the game because there isn't a fast travel door around was such a waste of time. Completing those collectables meant that more than half of the time was just used walking to fast travel doors...

 

Then there are also the Valkyries, which are cool and end with a fight with the hardest boss in the game, and two challenge areas. Muspelheim has some trials with conditions, like killing all enemies before time runs out or inside rings in the ground, along annoying ones like not getting hit or killing 100 enemies... Nifleheim is a dungeon with a fixed layout that changes slightly and has random chests, which was fine for a while but takes like 3 hours of doing it over and over to finish up everything.

 

The good thing is that nothing is missable but the lack of easily accessible fast travel pads it way more than it should.

 

The Media Corner

 

I left the hardest boss in the game to pop the platinum. I read that people had trouble with it, even on easy, but I managed to get her down on Normal first try (although barely).

 

Popping the Platinum. This was my first time fighting this boss so it looks pretty rough. I almost died, though! I play so bad at the beginning too, lol.

[AJ_Radio]

You have more praise for God of War 2018 than I do. 

 

I have a soft spot for the series because I was a Senior in high school back in 2005 and at the time, I thought the original God of War was amazing. It diverted me from MMOs Runescape and World of Warcraft which I played heavily then. 

 

This latest game was a chore to get through. Sony Santa Monica tried to sell us the fact that there are loading screens. That’s awesome and great, but they replaced them with these pointless running sessions between fast travel points. Run through another dimension to get to another door. Watch a tree glow pretty for 20 - 30 seconds as Kratos and Arteus go from one area to another. 

 

Doing all this while hunting for Odin’s Ravens and finding those treasures made this game boring and overly tedious. At least Horizon Zero Dawn was more instantaneous with its fast travel points. Here in God of War 2018 it was just boring hearing a chopped off head talk while the three of them try to tell stories as you explore. 

 

The enemies were overly redundant. Kill the same floating eyes, take down the same trolls over and over. God of War 3 and the PS2 era God of Wars had more varied enemies. This games version of Challenge of the Gods was a disappointment. 

 

I fully get and understand that the Greek setting and mythology was getting stale, which Assassins Creed Odyssey is now focusing on. I suppose eventually that we will get an explanation from Cory or someone at Sony Santa Monica on how Kratos landed in a Norse mythologic society. How he met his deceased wife, etc etc. 

 

Much of the story revolves around Kratos and Arteus bonding together as father and son. You suspect that Arteus knew that his father was not from there, while he literally has no clue what Kratos had done before he met his dead wife. The relationship grows rocky as Arteus tries to pressure Kratos into telling his past. I expected Arteus to flat out leave his father for a long definite period of time given the way he was treated. 

 

In conclusion this was a good game, but not Game of the Year in my opinion. I honestly think a lot of reviews regarding this game were bought and paid for. This isn’t a bad game at all don’t get me wrong, but I ended up not being all that excited for it compared to the previous games in the God of War series. The way the audience reacted at E3 2016 when God of War was revealed, I figured it would be something spectacular. 

 

Could be the fact that I’m older now and I’m more difficult to please, given all the games I’ve played throughout my life time. 

 

Still you gave a good review for the game.

[AndresLionheart]

@Spaz Did I praise it too much? I actually thought I was being a bit too harsh on it. It's nice to see someone that I completely agree with.

I wasn't a fan of the earlier titles either, I simply liked them for the mindless fun and over the top killing sequences.

 

You could sum up all my thoughts with the "I didn't see the game of the year material" comment. Everything the game does feels like a given considering the budget it had.

I didn't stop to think about enemy variety except when it came to bosses. There are like 2 unique bosses. The rest start as bosses and then get demoted to regular enemies. On top of that, other than Baldur, all the other boss fights do not feel epic like in the older games.

 

I didn't mind the stories on the canoe. However, the inconvenient fast travel was the worst thing about this game. The switching between realms also got annoying. Stuff like that is fine at first to make the game more immersive, but later down the line a more convenient way should be introduced. Like maybe let the player simply fast travel from the map menu after finishing the game.

[AJ_Radio]

Back then in the PS2 era a lot of games had rather simplistic stories. Even looking at GTA San Andreas the story was simple in comparison to most AAA games today. 

 

In the original God of War we learn how Kratos sold himself to Ares to prevent death. But in doing so he becomes a monster, killing his own family and then decides to enact vengeance on Ares. 

 

The new God of War takes on a much deeper story and I think this is due to the fact that the audience, including us are older now and can understand more complex story plots and twists. But in a way I miss the more simplistic kind of game, and the original game did that wonderfully. 

 

Fast travel like in other games did this fine. God of War 2018 tried to sell us the lack of loading screens. A technical accomplishment, but it was basically little stories being shared by three characters. 

 

I spent hours going after the ravens and the treasures and I know exactly what you mean. 

[AndresLionheart]

Tales of Symphonia

Game Difficulty: 3/10

Platinum Difficulty: 6/10

Time to Platinum: 125 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

I have finally gotten around to fully complete this game! I played Tales of Symphonia a bunch of times on Gamecube but when the PS3 version came out I didn't feel like playing it for some reason. I started and quickly dropped it.

This is the game that introduced me to the franchise in 2001 and made me a fan of it. From there I went back and played some of the older games, including the ones that were released in japanese only.

 

This is one of my favorite games of all time. I found it at a time when I was already into JRPGs but I wanted one in which I could move around, block and combo enemies. It not only gave me all that but was also multiplayer, a feature I would have never thought possible in an RPG (I know older things like Secret of Mana exist).

 

Now why is it one of my favorite games? It is a bit hard to tell. As I mentioned before the timing in which I played it had a big influence in it, so I'm fairly biased. Regardless of that the key features that I cna mention are the story, graphics, music, length and gameplay, so pretty much everything, lol.

 

Story because while it can be seen cliché by today standards back then was something new to me. If it wasn't for the fact it came out in 2 discs I would have thought an important story point that I don't want to spoil was the end of the game. That moment caught me really off-guard regardless of me knowing it was not the end. It was something no other game I played before made me experience.

 

Graphics because I always liked anime and the cel-shaded style was hitting hard at the time with the announcement of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. That style of graphics was the best thing that could happen for japanese games.

 

Music because it has some amazing songs anywhere you go. None of the battle themes are wasted, Fatalize and Fighting of the Spirit especially. Every place, cutscene and battle has the appropriate song.

 

Length because it was a massive JRPG, which came in 2 mini dvds back on the Gamecube. This reminded me of the amazed I was when I got Final Fantasy VIII (another favorite of mine), which came in 4 CDs. During the course of the game the story hits different chapters that end up changing the mood of the game. It is as if there were several very defined and different acts to the whole plot. Discovering the next bit and seeing it keep going was a really nice feeling. This feeling also gets countered by how sad I felt when I finally finished it. Looking at the credits I was sad that such an awesome experience came to an end.

 

Gameplay because it is right there in the middle ground between complex and simple. It's easy to understand with the tiered system of artes (called techs here) and the lack of free run makes magic defense and backstepping actually useful.

 

This would leave out the characters. I know a lot of people have problems with Lloyd and Colette, and it is understandable why. Both of them start off kinda oblivious, the difference is that Lloyd gets better while Colette becomes unimportant. So, I only have problems with Colette =P

 

Another important point for me is the amount of side content. There are a lot of really cool battles that someone could easily miss, like the Sword Dancer, Abyssion, Cameo Team and Niflheim (to which this version adds another boss fight). Cool fights to find out are always nice to have.

 

Anyway, I feel one of these days I could make like a 1 hour retrospective or something, but for now this little summary will do.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

Now we get to a whole different game and the reason why it took me so long to finally get around to completing this.

 

Tales of Symphonia has A LOT of missable. So many that it is pretty much impossible to find everything on your own. There are things with very small timeframes that are required to fully complete because they may give an item or title. On top of that we also have the issue of what we usually call the "Flanoir Doctor Scene", a scene that not only has specific items and titles, but can only be done once per playthrough and you need to raise affection with the character you need something from.

 

Affection is a hidden value that is affected by choices during the game. There are guides to know how much every choice affects each character's affection, but that means keeping a guide around to know what's up. Thankfully it is not that hard to get whoever you want due to sidequests and overworld skits for each character which yield a big boost, but it is always something to keep in mind is screwing someone's affection could mean missing the chance of the playthrough when reaching Flanoir.

 

That by itself means you have to at the very least do 4 playthroughs in a game with no cutscene skip. A fast playthough takes around 10 hours...

 

With so much stuff to keep track off I had 4 documents around for different information. The Online Save Checker was also pretty useful to check on hidden information and to easily find out the items I was missing.

 

How I went about it was to follow this complete walkthrough on my first playthrough to make sure I got all the sidequest I could so that I would be left with cleanup only from that point onward. There are also a bunch of "challenge" titles that require things like no one dying until the Tower of Mana boss or keeping Lloyd equipped with his crappier swords until the fight with Kilia. That's not so bad until you find out about the title Gung Ho, which requires fighting a very late boss, Rodyle (which is about 3/4 of the game) with a combined party level of 145 or lower. Let's break down how I did my 4 playthroughs:

 

-1st Playthrough: I followed the guide mentioned before to do every sidequest (and I still missed Virginia's Diary). Since I did every sidequest I had high affection with Kratos so I picked him in Flanoir to get all his titles (this is not that good of an idea because it means you need to grind him up to level 100 with the regular experience). Of the challenge titles I did Eternal Apprentice, Brave Soul and Friendship First, along with Treasure Hunter. I wanted to also do I Hate Gels, but that's kinda difficult to do when you don't want anyone to die. Since I had to get Kratos to level 100 I took this chance to do everyone's Coliseum titles to get the best stats on the next playthrough.

 

-2nd Playthrough: I was gonna do Colette but I ended up doing Zelos. I wanted to get Gung Ho out of the way ASAP to get it out of the way and so I could pick an experience multiplier for the remaining playthroughs to finish the game faster.

My idea was to keep one character dead all the time so he wouldn't get exp, then I would slot him in for the Rodyle fight to lower the average level. This was a good plan, the problem was that I picked Colette for that. The problem with that is that when she gets kidnapped much later into the game she comes back auto-leveled to the party average. She was level 10 and came back at level 30. I was concerned about my chances so form there I started to kill 2 characters to keep them at the level they were at the time, which was 29 I think. In the end this wasn't necessary. I was avoiding every non required battle, so I was basically only doing bosses. By the time I reached Rodyle my main party (Lloyd, Zelos, Genis and Raine) was below level 145 combined. It was pretty funny because they were levels 37, 35, 36 and 36, which equals to 144. In other words, you don't need to do anything special for that title, simply avoid all battles. If you want to be super safe and use the "keep someone dead" strat, kill Genis, he never leaves so he won't get auto leveled.

Since I was doing Zelos I also wanted to get the Gigolo title out of the way. There was a glitch back in the GC version that let's you get that title without talking to all women. A lot of sources state that that was fixed in this version (including the guide I linked here), but turns out the glitch still exists! The only difference is the timing. It used to be right before getting the Derris Emblem you had to go back to Zelos' mansion to get the title, now it is right AFTER getting the Derris Emblem. So, basically, get the emblem and then walk back instead of continuing with the rest of the final dungeon.

Oh, I also did I Hate Gels in this one. This title only requires not using gels, so if someone dies you can still use Life Bottles to get them back up.

 

-3rd Playthrough: I did Colette here. She is the "free playthrough" since using common sense will always put her on your top 3 in affection. I didn't have enough grade for 10x Exp so I tried out Combo Exp. It is better than 2x Exp but way worse than 10x. Still, was good enough to get the level 100 titles for everyone without much grinding.

 

-4th Playthrough: This is the one to cheese. I got Regal and Genis on my top 3 so I could pick Regal first to get his final title and then revert back to pick Genis for his and Presea's final titles right before the end of the game. I got so used to everything that getting both of them up there was not a problem. All I really did was pick the usual things that Genis likes, talk to him first in those sections were you can speak to the party and I did Candy's Quiz for Regal, which was enough to get him 3rd in affection. I still had all their overworld skits but those were not necessary.

 

Now, doing all that sucks, but thanks to doing this platinum I got to see cutscenes and small areas I never went to. I got to learn that Zelos is actually half-brother with Seles and that Seles' mother tried to kill him. I got to see that all the time Kratos' wasn't in the party he was going around collecting stuff to help Lloyd. I got to see special conversations between Lloyd and Zelos which made me appreciate Zelos much more. I got to learn why Genis and Raine's mother abandoned them. All of that and other little tidbits of story that I missed for so many years. Doing the Platinum allowed me to see a new facet in one of my favorite games of all time. It was a chore at points, but I'm glad I completed it.

Edited June 16, 2019 by AndresLionheart

[AndresLionheart]

Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey

Game Difficulty: 4/10

Platinum Difficulty: 4/10

Time to Platinum: 49 hours

 

I haven't played one of these since Atelier Totori back in 2013. This would be the second one I play in the millions of these games, although I did play Atelier Meruru for a few hours (I did end up dropping it because I started it way too soon after finishing Totori).

 

These games are nothing to write home about. In essence all they are is low budget weeb trash. The crafting is cool an allows for varied creations, but all these games are pretty much the same. A cast filled with moe characters with the player controlling a cute girl starting to learn alchemy because of X or Y reason.

It sounds like I'm bashing the game for it but that's not it. I knew head on what I was getting into and I got what I expected. This is what these games do and why they sell to whatever small amount of people that buy them. A niche that has lived quite long (I think since the PS2?). I mean, I like weeb trash, that's why I play things like this, Senran Kagura and Neptunia.

 

Anyway, the game starts with this girl that lives in a town inside a big cave. She has never been able to go outside of the cave so her dream is to be able to. The course of history changes when Sophie, the alchemist form the previous game, visits the town and teaches Firis alchemy. From here starts something I liked, the fact that you are not allowed to go out of this place for the following hour or so of game. That made the event of leaving the place also important for the player.

From there you are given 360 days to get 3 out of the 5 letters of recommendations from licensed alchemists to be allowed to take the exam to become a fully fledged alchemist.

 

The time is extremelly lenient. You only need 3 letters of recommendation but I got all 5 and I still had 182 days left. I used about 60 days to craft some good shit for the exam (since you need to win an important battle for the only missable trophy, or play the game again in a NG+ of sorts... no thanks).

After the exam there is no more time limit so you get to do the other half of the game without having to mind wasting time. I didn't have any problem with the time limit, but not seeing the counter below the clock made me feel relieved anyway.

What I found funny is that while looking for some info I read about people who were running out of time while not even close to the exam, or getting to the exam with Firis only at level 2... like how... I sometimes don't understand how people can play games like this so wrong, lol.

 

The worst part about this game is how unimportant most of the characters are. The only characters, other than Firis, that get any importance are Liane (Firis' older sister) and Sophie, the other 6 characters that join the party feel like whatever. I mean, I understand the budget at hand, but why add so many then? Worst part is you can't even have all of them on the group at the same time, 3 are left out, so why not just simply cut 3 characters and put some more time on to the others?

 

This is the first game to adopt an Open World of sorts, and I have to say I like it more like this. The disjointed areas I remember from Totori felt really artifitial. In this game you get a portable Atelier, so no need to go back to a town or to the house every night! (you don't even need to sleep =P).

 

Along the journey you meet a bunch of characters, so many that you forget half of them right away because, unless you are looking everywhere (which you can't when a time limit is looming over), you will never see them again.

From all the random events that happened I wanted to make note of this one in which Sophie and Plachta (the other important character from the previous game) were arguing about Liane's age. They come to the Atelier to ask that, to which Liane says she is 18. What is important here is that since she is the older sister I only then started wondering about Firis' age. Compared to other Atelier protagonists she seemed older (although her VA was pretty terrible trying to sound super young) and, while short, she still had a more developed body (for once, she has boobs). This is how she looks like, btw:

 

Spoiler

 

So, I looked up her age because I got curious... Turns out she is 15? Like... thanks, Japan, that's a very well developed 15 years old, I guess.

 

All the characters are pretty one note. Liane is the classic older sister obsessed with her cute younger sister to the point it just feels she wants to fuck her. Sophie is the messy teacher. Oskar is obsessed with flowers. Revy is obsessed with becoming stronger by finding ancient treasures. Angriff is obsessed with money (although for good reason). Kald is obsessed with recording history. Drossel is obsessed with dolls. Yes, a lot of obsessed people, so you get my point =P.

 

The battles in this game are weird... Due to how alchemy works, this game can be as difficult or as easy as your ability with making equipment gets. The problem with this is that the balancing can be all over the place. In my experience all my fights were completely binary, I either destroyed the boss and it had no chance at all, or I was doing misserable amounts of damage and getting one shot. There are a lot of abilities and items but only a few were important because of this blancing. I never had to heal or revive someone, I never had to choose items wisely or use buffs (I used some buffs but I knew they weren't necessary). I dunno how they could fix that, though.

 

In closing, I enjoyed my journey, but it was nothing I can recommend. Another game I will for sure never play again.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

It has 10 endings, but all can be achieved one right after the other. Different from something like Atelier Totori, you can unlock every character ending without one voiding the other, you simply get to choose at the end from all the ones that you have unlocked (including the true ending which is unlocked by fulfilling the requirements of all other endings).

 

The part that I thank the most is not requiring to beat any of the highest level bosses and only asking for 80% of data completion. If this game asked for 100% of everything I bet the plat would be Ultra Rare. There are a lot of things to get, fight and create, but the game gets to a point in which you don't want to synthetize any more items... especially the good ones.

With how the alchemy system works it is possible to create some sick equipment and usable items that can demolish everything, but that takes time and some planning, things I was not willing to offer at the point close to the end.

 

The Media Corner

 

I popped the platinum with the True Ending, but the pop happens upon making the decision instead of when the scene happens, so that's very uninteresting, so let's just show some random things.

 

Spoiler

This is how Firis looks in a Hotspring.

 

Some boss that I think may be a recurrent character in the series? Not sure about that. After this fight you get a quest to refight her a few days later, which I guess would be a harder fight. This is a good example of how my fights went. Keep in mind my equipment wasn't even that good. I only made a few OP accessories, all the weapons and armors were found or dropped by bosses.

Edited June 23, 2019 by AndresLionheart

[Honor_Hand]

Hey there Andres, how have you been? Hope you're doing good.

 

It's been a while since I last commented here. ? Congrats on your latest Platinums. Glad that you were able to go back and get the Platinum on Tales of Symphonia. I started that game months ago too and, just like you, even though it is one of my favorite titles on the GameCube and one that made me love the Tales franchise, I just couldn't quite get into doing all those extra playthroughs for the Platinum. I finished the game, was happy with it and call it a day lol.

 

Thanks for outlining your strategy above and for sharing that Online Save checker above, might prove useful if ever decide to go back to it. I mean, I have to at some point, right? o.o

 

Also, come on my boy, everybody loves weeb trash. I do. I really like the look on those Atelier games. I have only played Totori and enjoyed it pretty much, even if my only playthrough consisted on me mostly fucking around and not getting things done, leading to a bad ending due to running out of time. What can I say? I don't like time limits on my RPGs xxD But the game was really cool, though it had a unique charm of its own. Besides, cute girls doing cute stuff? Sign me up! But I know for a fact that the whole franchise must be kind of the same thing. Haven't added them to my library yet, only the Limited Edition of Totori on PS3 is the one I got. And I swear I got that one used by just pure luck. Anyways, the games look alright if you're into the moe stuff. Personally, I need to get more into this series later on. :3

[AndresLionheart]

2 hours ago, Honor_Hand said:

Hey there Andres, how have you been? Hope you're doing good.

 

It's been a while since I last commented here. Congrats on your latest Platinums. Glad that you were able to go back and get the Platinum on Tales of Symphonia. I started that game months ago too and, just like you, even though it is one of my favorite titles on the GameCube and one that made me love the Tales franchise, I just couldn't quite get into doing all those extra playthroughs for the Platinum. I finished the game, was happy with it and call it a day lol.

 

Thanks for outlining your strategy above and for sharing that Online Save checker above, might prove useful if ever decide to go back to it. I mean, I have to at some point, right? o.o

 

Also, come on my boy, everybody loves weeb trash. I do. I really like the look on those Atelier games. I have only played Totori and enjoyed it pretty much, even if my only playthrough consisted on me mostly fucking around and not getting things done, leading to a bad ending due to running out of time. What can I say? I don't like time limits on my RPGs xxD But the game was really cool, though it had a unique charm of its own. Besides, cute girls doing cute stuff? Sign me up! But I know for a fact that the whole franchise must be kind of the same thing. Haven't added them to my library yet, only the Limited Edition of Totori on PS3 is the one I got. And I swear I got that one used by just pure luck. Anyways, the games look alright if you're into the moe stuff. Personally, I need to get more into this series later on. :3

Hi. Yeh, it's been a while. After a few plats I thought something could have happened to you so I checked your profile to see you latest activity, lol. I mean, maybe you died or Maduro decided to censor the whole internet by disabling it in the country or something, lol. Good to see neither of those things happened.

 

Doing that Symphonia plat does take some special mental state, for sure. I don't know what happened to me but I got into this Tales mood that made me finally want to go through the game.

That walkthrough helped a lot with condensing all the sidequests along with the main story in one place. My usual problem with games like Symphonia is the annoyance of having to check a bunch of different sources a bunch of times because the information is not in chronological order. Now that I think about it, I should have taken notes of the order in which I was completing things for a simple point to point guide for those concerned about getting lost and missing something... damn, that would have been so useful, lol.

 

Of course we all love weeb trash! I just wasn't sure if I was getting the point across that I simply like calling it weeb trash, I found the term funny xD.

I enjoyed my time with Totori. Since it was the first one I played it felt like a different take on RPGs. At the time I remember I was unsure about having a limited amount of time to play, but I quickly got very efficient at the game and went through it without any issues. I really liked completing small tasks for the adventurer points, it actually made it feel like I was working for a real license. That game also had this feeling of wanting to know what was further away from the town, making earning those license upgrades that much sweeter. The cast of characters in that one was more developed, too, if I remember correctly.

Also, I'm sorry for making fun of people running out of time =P. Although, the time in Totori was more strict (and I've heard is even stricter in previous games).

[Honor_Hand]

On 23/6/2019 at 0:51 PM, AndresLionheart said:

Hi. Yeh, it's been a while. After a few plats I thought something could have happened to you so I checked your profile to see you latest activity, lol. I mean, maybe you died or Maduro decided to censor the whole internet by disabling it in the country or something, lol. Good to see neither of those things happened.

 

Doing that Symphonia plat does take some special mental state, for sure. I don't know what happened to me but I got into this Tales mood that made me finally want to go through the game.

That walkthrough helped a lot with condensing all the sidequests along with the main story in one place. My usual problem with games like Symphonia is the annoyance of having to check a bunch of different sources a bunch of times because the information is not in chronological order. Now that I think about it, I should have taken notes of the order in which I was completing things for a simple point to point guide for those concerned about getting lost and missing something... damn, that would have been so useful, lol.

 

Of course we all love weeb trash! I just wasn't sure if I was getting the point across that I simply like calling it weeb trash, I found the term funny xD.

I enjoyed my time with Totori. Since it was the first one I played it felt like a different take on RPGs. At the time I remember I was unsure about having a limited amount of time to play, but I quickly got very efficient at the game and went through it without any issues. I really liked completing small tasks for the adventurer points, it actually made it feel like I was working for a real license. That game also had this feeling of wanting to know what was further away from the town, making earning those license upgrades that much sweeter. The cast of characters in that one was more developed, too, if I remember correctly.

Also, I'm sorry for making fun of people running out of time =P. Although, the time in Totori was more strict (and I've heard is even stricter in previous games).

Still alive my dude. Yeah, I'm active, it's just that I don't always have time to check and reply everywhere, so I sometimes take a couple of days off the site... and then I forget I had to reply on certain profiles, posts, and whatnot xxxD

 

I think you may have gotten the mood to get it finished once and for all. It's quite an undertaking after all. Not one that I would take out of the blue for sure. Symphonia itself is a great game from its time, it probably hasn't aged that well compared to the newest Tales of games but I enjoyed my time with it. At least, that one playthrough I did to just check on the story again. I will get back to it at one point, and yes, a point-to-point guide would have been great lmao
 

It's a funny term. It used to have a sort of negative connotation before but I see everyone uses it now without caring much. Like it doesn't have that much of a negative meaning nowadays   Probably could get more efficient on a second playthrough. I actually enjoyed my time with the game and Totori (and the whole alchemy system) is what made me play all the way through the end, even if I already knew well in advance I had fucked up with my time and was on a one way trip to bad-endingland xP Still need to get back to it, like with many games in my backlog   Ooh, don't worry, I know I'm not the only one running out of time out there. xP

 

Hope to read more about your future game endeavors in the future. See you.