Tales of AndresLionheart's backlog

[AndresLionheart]

Trials of Mana

Game Difficulty: 2/10

Platinum Difficulty: 2/10

Time to Platinum: 40 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

I bought this one on release on Play-Asia (since it's a niche game so no store in my country had it. The few that had it wanted to take advatange of being so few and overcharged for it). With all the bullshit going around in the world my shipment was stuck. I can't say for sure but I think the customs office over here were not working at all for a while.

It was taking so long that Play-Asia had it on their weekly sale for $23. I bought another copy (which actually got here before the $60 one) and I will let the other copy at full price be sent back to them so I can get my $60 for something else =P. I digress!

 

Since the reveal trailer happened I was interested. The graphics looked really nice and I had already played through the Secret of Mana Remake. From there I didn't look much into it and bought it blindly.

 

You have to pick 3 out of 6 possible characters, with the first one picked becoming the main character. I was gonna choose Duran (the warrior-like character), Angela (the offensive mage) and Charlotte (the healer). I ended up going with Angela as the main though because I remembered from Secret of Mana that playing as a caster is much more fun because you have more stuff to do.

After playing with all 6 characters I can say that Hawkeye (the thief) is a really good choice for those wanting to play a melee character that can do other stuff. He can learn elemental attacks and debuffs, and has a very offensive-focused playstyle.

 

The battle system may be simple, but it's responsive. It even has a dodge with iframes that can be used to cancel out of melee attacks, making everything feel even more responsive. Where the dodge roll comes even more into play is with the bosses.

Bosses utilize the system of marking place with danger zones before an attack lands. This makes fights fair and fun because with enough skill you can avoid everything... most of the time. A lot of them have different phases with different attacks and weaknesses to exploit. I really liked how these fights developed, especially as a mage with all sorts of elemental spells to abuse weaknesses.

 

The music is something that I could have instantly tied to Secret of Mana if you didn't show which game it came from. It has this very distinctive style, which is a good thing in my opinion. The tracks may not be that memorable, but at least they have their identity.

 

My first issue comes with the story. I don't want to rag on it too much because it's a game that originally came out on SNES, but my issue it's not with its simplicity. My problem comes with the fact that even though it's simple, it's easy to lose track of what's going on. Since you play as 3 out of 6 characters, and there are 3 unique groups of antagonists that player characters share in pairs, a lot of people show here and there for far too short time to remember them afterwards. Some people may show up like once or twice. At some point I didn't even remember why my main character even wanted the Sword of Mana for (which is kind of the focus of the story. It's what every villain is looking for as well).

This thing of short time spent with characters also transfers to areas. Sometimes you simply breeze through a town just because it was on the way to your destination, with nothing happening in it. I also tended to forget towns because of this.

Everything in this game moves a bit too fast, giving nothing time to stick.

My other big issue are loading screens, they are a bit too long. It is especially noticeable during the latter half of the game when you go around the world. You fly toward the destination and land in the area, triggering a 10-15 second load screen, which then leaves you in the entrance to a the dungeon you are going to, which triggers ANOTHER 10-15 seconds load screen. It doesn't sound like much, but it's long enough to be a bit jarring.

 

Now, one thing on my mind that I have to share comes from the characters. As I mentioned before I only watched the reveal trailer. When I watched it one character caught my eye. That character was obviously Angela. Here's her main artwork for this game:

 

Spoiler

 

I thought she was cute, and I like my games when they include cute female characters to play as. What's important about this is that I was wrong. She was not cute, she was just plain-ass hot...

It all starts innocent enough but later when you can change the character class their outfits change. Angela in particular suffers from having several nice ones, which makes it hard to stick with one. The other problem with this is that you cannot unlock all of these and pick from them anytime, you can only choose among those of the classes you went through during the playthrough. And yet another problem with this is that I preferred costumes from the Dark side classes but I preferred the spells and class strikes from the Light side classes.

 

These are my favorites: Magus, Spellbinder and Sorceress

 

Since I went through the light classes first I had Sorceress at first, which still held my "cute" view of her. I really liked how the purple gloves and boots went with her hair (and the thighs, obviously). Then on my second playthrough I went through the dark classes and it's when I met the Magus class... I prepared some gifs to explain my points on my switch from "cute" to "hot" (even though everyone could already tell...)

 

 

I already liked how she walked, but this fucking outfit intensified it by 100... That walk cycle is... hypnotic. Or should I say hips-notic!... (sorry... it just wrote itself).

The other one when she is sprinting forward emphasizes how thin her waist is, which distracted me all the time. (I could make a joke about how it is not a "waste" of something but I won't...).

 

Her voice fits her perfectly in my opinion. It's cute and has this little touch of spoiled princess without going overboard, which would have made her annoying.

Oh, and don't worry, she is legal

Kudos to Square-Enix for not allowing their "ethics department" to ruin the great vistas!

 

Since there are 3 playthroughs for completion, there is New Game +. And it was THIS close of being the perfect type of NG+.

Throughout the game you unlock passive abilities, regular ones and others called "chain abilities". Chain Abilities are carried through playthroughs and can give massive effects. For example there is one for beating a secret superboss that makes spells cost 0 MP. Items, money, equipment, all of that is carried over. What ruined it is that levels also carry over. If you play with any character you already used they will be super high level and destroy everything through the whole game.

I obviously wanted to keep Angela around. I thought I was gonna have a blast through the new playthrough because I was gonna be able to spam spells and class strikes thanks to the OP chain abilities, but the levels ruined it =(.

 

IMPORTANT EDIT: Great news! With the release of patch 1.10 on October 14th both my main issues with this game have been fixed! You can now choose to revert back to level 1 when going into New Game +, and every class you go through now permanently unlocks its costume! With those changes I could now play with the Magus costume while utilizing the Sorceress spells, on top of being able to start at level 1!

Not only did the patch add that, they also added 2 new difficulty options. One is a simple Expert mode with the usual enemies getting higher stats, but the other is a much more challenging one with stronger bosses and time limits on the boss fights to make it even harder.

Too bad I'm already done with this game, but I will at some point replay it just for fun now that this happened =).

 

I also couldn't help but think of how much content is wasted due to the 6 characters. Every character has lines as a protagonist, first companion and second companion. Some cutscenes differ a bit depending on who is on the team, and some don't even happen at all if someone isn't there. There are 3 final bosses and 3 final dungeons. A lot of that isn't seen by the majority of players.

Even if you play through 3 times, you still do not experience every possible line of dialog unless you play with each permutation of team. It's a lot of wasted development that could go into making the game longer if all 6 characters where simply on the party and you choose 3 to go into battle.

 

I did enjoy my time with the game (Angela did increase my enjoyment but was not the main cause of it). It's a fun little game in which it's fun to kill little enemies and to battle bosses. Without much exploration and a star on the map always showing you where to go it feels short, a bit too short. But with the need to play through is for completion, that could be seen as a positive.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

3 playthroughs yet it's still only a 30-40 hour run. I took 40 because I was watching some cutscenes during my 2nd and 3rd playthroughs because of the different protragonist.

Finding all Lil' Cactus is easy enough with a guide, and the rewards from finding it also make it so you can see chests on the map, making the already easy 200 chests found even easier.

 

The post-game boss on Hard is pathetically easy, and the superboss isn't that super to be honest. Here is Anise getting destroyed on Hard under 2 minutes for the last of her missions (not required for platinum, I just wanted the Chain Abilities): 

 

 

This is what I was using to optimize damage with Angela:

Spoiler

 

I had passives that increase magic damage (Limit Break II, Limit Break III and Elemental Combo), passives to increase crit by like 25% and 40% (Pinpoint II and Pinpoint III, which I don't know if they stack additively or mutiplicatively... considering how often I was critting I'd say it's additive), and one that gave me a Magic Attack and Magic Defense buff on battle start (True Protection). Obsidian Power is the 0 MP spent. If I had a few more levels I could have gotten a passive that increased crit damage by like 40%...

On top of that Charlotte had stuff to increase everyone's damage on weakness hits by 12 or 14%, one that reduced enemy magic defense by 10% and another that debuffed enemies with a magic defense and magic attack debuff on battle start. Yeah... I was going hard for as much magic damage as I could. It was especially fun to go through the post-game dungeon with this setup. Everything was getting destroyed, lol.

 

Here is how I beat the superboss while being way below its level (in part thanks to Duran who gets targeted due to a passive, and Charlotte who can debuff enemies):

 

It had a very cool ending =P

 

Most other things happened naturally. That's why the difficulty rating is so low. Because of this I don't really have much to say about the Platinum experience. It was one of the fun and relaxing rides we all need every now and then =)

Edited October 30, 2020 by AndresLionheart
Important changes due to patch 1.10

[AJ_Radio]

I was too young to remember most of those old Castlevania games. It wasn't until the Angry Video Game Nerd came along that I knew most of the Castlevania series in general.

 

I get sort of annoyed that trophy lists like that don't get a platinum, yet an older collection of games that Konami released somehow did get a platinum. Super Castlevania IV is the only game in the set that I played on the actual console, way back when at my cousin's house. So there's some nostalgia there, but for everything else I don't have that because I never played them as a kid.

 

They basically copied the same trophy list for the Contra Anniversary Collection. Personally I enjoyed those games more since they are more fast paced which better suits my style.

 

I don't know if using those passwords and then beating the final stage for Castlevania 3 will unlock those character specific trophies. Because I would imagine playing an old game like that multiple times is overly boring.

 

Going to have to wait for a sale on this collection, they want too much money for it on the PS Store.

[AndresLionheart]

11 minutes ago, Spaz said:

I don't know if using those passwords and then beating the final stage for Castlevania 3 will unlock those character specific trophies. Because I would imagine playing an old game like that multiple times is overly boring.

 

Going to have to wait for a sale on this collection, they want too much money for it on the PS Store.

I can tell you that it does count when using a password because that's what I did. I beat it with Grant normally and then used passwords for the rest. Good thing it does count because it would have gotten boring otherwise. It's a good game but it leans a bit too much on the cheap difficulty. That's why I liked Castlevania 1 more out of the NES games.

Castlevania IV was a LOT of fun. As with most SNES games, the graphics still hold up. It's easier than the older game without being too easy, hitting that sweetspot of complete enjoyment. Although I don't need to tell that because I have played it before, and even better, you played it when it was current, lol.

 

I bought it on the last sale on August for $7. If it had a Platinum I would have probably bought it on release, tbh. It also annoys me when games don't get plats when nowadays there is no standard for what can get one and what can't.

[AJ_Radio]

2 minutes ago, AndresLionheart said:

It also annoys me when games don't get plats when nowadays there is no standard for what can get one and what can't.

 

Ain't that the truth. I could get into the whole argument of the EZPZ and what Ratalaika did to trophies, but I won't, because I'm sure you've already witnessed it.

[AndresLionheart]

Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight

Game Difficulty: 3/10

Platinum Difficulty: 2/10

Time to Platinum: 12 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

Hasn't been that long, huh? Suffices to say that with how good the music in Persona 5 is I was gonna want to play this one. It was 74% off so it doesn't get much better than that.

 

Compared to Persona 4: Dancing All Night, this one is a much lower budget game. There isn't a story, which isn't all that bad since in P4D it got in the way sooo much with cutscenes that were way too long. There are, however, conversations between characters called Social Ranks, similar to those of the actual Persona 5 game. Most of what the characters talk isn't too important because it doesn't really show a new facet of them or develop anything further, it's mostly just for fun. At least everything is fully voiced.

The game teases some sort of story with The Twins telling you that they have an older sister who has a guest that she thinks it's the best of the best and you have to learn to dance better to show them that what they think it's not true. All that is just BS though. The supposed older sister and his guest never appear and nothing comes from it. In the end it's just about the friends we made along the way, I guess...

 

What kinda bummed me out a little bit is that there aren't that many songs. I feel like I was done unlocking songs too fast.

There are some remixes and some of the original tracks, and some songs are in both their regular version and remixed version. The remixed versions are mostly not better than any of the originals, though. They aren't bad but I couldn't help to think that I would much rather be hearing, and playing, the original versions. Sometimes I would end up missing a few notes because I would get too into the song, moving my hands and body around to the beat, lol.

 

The UI tries to emulate that of the original game. You can tell it's not the real thing but they did a decent job.

The character models I'm pretty sure are the same, although Makoto and Ryuji looked a little off to me. They all get all their costumes from P5 and it's DLC, along their new "dancing" one. Everyone looks great, especially the girls. Sadly you don't get to enjoy the costumes much because of the need to switch around constantly to unlock more of Ann's Social Ranks.

 

 

How the game is played is identical to P4D. The outer half of both the D-pad and the face buttons are used to hit the notes, as well as the sticks (or the oddly turned off by default L1 and R1) for scratches. This system worked well on the small screen of the Vita since the notes come out from the middle and go toward the edges of screen, making it intuitive when the screen is in-between the buttons, but on a TV it doesn't work as fine. You will have to shift around your head/eyes to catch everything. A lot of the time I got some notes which would slip my sight by camouflaging with the background. I had to get farther away from the TV to get a better view of everything.

My biggest complaint (even though it wasn't a problem in my case because I have a good-ass TV with great response time) is that this game commits one deadly sin of rhythm games: It's lag calibration, or lack thereof, is atrocious. You can change it but manually, there isn't a way to calibrate it like in every other rhythm game in existance that is not exclusive to portable consoles.

 

A few important songs get a whole "music video clip" like treatment with what looks like edited scenes and such. Most other songs just have the characters dancing in some area of the original game. The dances are unique for each song but are impossible to appreciate when the screen is filled with stuff to press, lol. There is a replay feature for those who want to check the dances, though.

 

And that's about it... There isn't that much to this game. The attempt at an antagonist ends in smoke, so it's all just about dancing for the heck of it. Not a bad reason, but a wasted opportunity.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

Pfff... they could have made this so much more demanding... There are lots of support modifiers that already made all difficulties piss easy, so I don't get why they ask almost nothing from Hard and just 1 thing from All Night (the hardest difficulty). Except for a few select things everything can be completed by just playing on Easy and then like half of Normal.

 

Ann and Makoto's Social Ranks can be a little bit annoying to unlock due to having to constantly change outfits and accessories respectively. And that's about it for the Plat =/

 

After finishing the Plat I went along and played the songs I liked the most on All Night. Here are the ones I had the most fun with.

 

The chorus in this one is fire! This recording in particular was especially cool because this was actually my first time playing this song in this difficulty. The only one I did well on my first attempt.

 

One of my favorites

 

Hype boss song is hype

Edited April 8, 2021 by AndresLionheart

[AndresLionheart]

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

Game Difficulty: 4/10

Platinum Difficulty: 5/10

Time to Platinum: 60 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

The next game in the "I started a long running series with the 8th installment" is here (previous ones being Final Fantasy VIII, Mega Man 8 and Dragon Quest VIII).

This one I bought around the time of release because I knew is one of those games that doesn't get too many physical copies. Before even playing it I've read about the atrocious translation it had and that a patch retranslating the whole game was coming, so I waited for that. The patch came but then I was doing something else and time went on. So, around 3 weeks ago I wanted to start an RPG after suffering through the horrible Megadimension Neptunia VIIR. This was finally the time.

 

The first thing that anyone would notice are the graphics. While the anime parts are nice and all, the regular game graphics are really basic. This is not a bad thing, though. With lower graphic fidelity comes the benefit of better performance. The game runs at 60 FPS (albeit can dip here and there) and load times are really fast (which is funny because there is a hint feature that shows tips during loading screens. Tips that are impossible to read because the loading screen stays up for like 1 second).

Personally I prefer worse graphics if that means better performance. I had a similar feeling back when Tales of Berseria and Final Fantasy XV came out. Berseria has simpler graphics but has rock solid performace with instant loading times, while FF XV looks amazing but runs at 30 FPS with load times that can last up to like 1 minute.

 

Gameplay-wise I was surprised by the fact that more than an action RPG this is a hack 'n' slash. Battles do not have to transition into a "battle mode" like with most RPGs, battles happen right there on the map while exploring. This makes exploring around while bashing monsters fast and efficient.

However, fighting things is not that deep. There are regular hits, special attacks, dodges and parries. Dodges and parries can be done while normal attacking, and if done with the correct timing reward the player with invincibility plus slow-mo enemies for dodges, and 100% critical chance for parries. Thanks also to the good performance every action feels exceedingly responsive. There isn't a single millisecond of delay in the controls.

 

In the music department we can find some upbeat and cool tunes, lots of which fall a little bit short in the "epic" gauge due to low budget sounding synthesizer used to make them. The main theme is a bit above the rest, though.

 

Before playing this I did research a bit to make sure it was fine to start with the 8th installment. As is common with long running series, it is totally fine to do so. There are some references to some older characters and locations but knowledge of none of them is required to understand what is going on in this game.

Speaking of which: the story kinda goes a bit too deep with the theme. I shouldn't spoil it here but for a story that happened on a single island of a world that is technically shared with 7 other games, the events that happen seem way too important for the whole world.

 

The setting of the deserted island was a pretty fun change for once. You start knowing nothing of this uncharted island and slowly explore it. Discovering about other people that were there before the player and such was pretty engaging to be honest.

After each chapter more people that were with you in the boat are rescued, and more parts of the settlement are built. By the end of the game leaving all of that behind did make me feel things. The game got me invested enough to actually feel for my time spent in this island.

 

While not being a game I would recommend to anyone, it did do enough to make my time with it enjoyable. Sadly it falls prey of its own low budget. All that could be done with the assigned budget was done, but a little more would have gone a long way into putting this more on par with other not-so-high budget JRPGs like the Tales of games. It's definitely better than an Atelier game at least, lol.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

It does ask for 100% of plenty of things, and it does have missables, but it is still an game that can be easily completed without a guide. Just with the few pointers given by the guide here on PSNP to make sure to not miss the few missables was enough to play at my own pace. Clean-up will always be needed because some things can only be gotten after finishing the game.

 

I do recommend playing it on normal first, though. Even when you have to do a whole other playthrough on NG+ the game is not enjoyable on Nightmare straight away. There is a heavy EXP penalty on Nightmare when fighting enemies of a lower level. This is of course so that you cannot over level. Enemies hit really hard and it makes exploring and fighting more annoying than challenging. I was actually playing it on Hard at the beginning but I lowered it due to this.

The only bad thing about replaying it is that you still need to complete sidequests and some other side content because a certain amount of it is required to achieve the true ending, which is needed for the trophy when beating it on Nightmare mode.

 

Even with the best equipment and being around level 80-90 the final bosses can put up a fight. Down here I will leave some of these fights:

 

Spoiler

 

The final boss in Nightmare difficulty (in spoiler tags because I show him in the thumbnail). In the last phase he has a nasty attack that, as far as I know, can only be parried. If the parry is missed your character gets hit until it dies.

 

Popping the Platinum with the True Final Boss in Nightmare difficulty. There are plenty of cutscenes after the fight so I just cut most of that and go straight to the part when the platinum pops, which funny enough is when the game goes back to the main menu. The good thing about this is that I get to leave it hanging there for a while to show the main theme of the game. The songs for the boss are pretty hype, too.

Edited February 17, 2021 by AndresLionheart

[AndresLionheart]

Hollow Knight

Game Difficulty: 4/10

Platinum Difficulty: 9/10 (or 4/10 with Invincibility Glitch)

Time to Platinum: 21 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

I actually tried this one on PC when it was new. I like metroidvanias and the graphics and setting of Hollow Knight looked super neat, so I gave it a go. I dropped it about 4 hours in because I was wasting too much time wandering around trying to find where to go.

 

Wandering around for the way forward is a common thing in metroidvanias, but the usual thing is that the map somewhat guides you or hints you to where to go next. Maybe it makes you go past a suspicious high ledge moments before you get a double jump ability, or it lets you see an enemy doing something that gives you an idea on how to solve a section.

None of that is present in Hollow Knight. You are thrusted into the world with little to no exposition and are let free to find what to do or where to go next. This is probably a big positive for a lot of people, but for me it just made me feel like I was wasting my time.

 

Due to the trophy walkthrough here in PSNP I decided to give it another go. If I have a guide telling me where to go I solve my wandering around problem and I get to fight all the bosses which was one of the main reasons I wanted to play this game. The guide is detailed and is very easy to follow (at least when you have a PC by your side. I bet is a little tougher to juggle around the instructions and the map when using a mobile device.

 

As I suspected, the ambiance and graphics are amazing. The sense of dread while exploring the desolate lands of Hollownest are perfectly represented with these cartoony graphics.

Most of the game made me think of Dark Souls 1 but in a 2D plane and with sprites. The unforgiving world full of creatures, the cryptic NPCs spouting what mostly feels like nonsense, the odd helper here and there, the cool bosses, and the mysterious origin and purpose of the player character.

 

A lot of the bosses did let me down a bit, though. When I first played on PC I beat the first few required bosses, then my next one was a fight against 3 mantis-like creatures (which was a really fun fight). When I followed the guide these mantis were like boss # 12 or something like that. After a while of following the guide I was wondering when I was finally going to find them, lol. By the time I found them my character was so powered up that the fight wasn't nearly as fun.

Going back to bosses letting me down, a lot of them are too simple. Simple to the point of feeling like a slightly stronger regular enemy. But when a good boss shows up, the fights are a thrill. Sadly it only happened for like... 6 or so bosses.

 

In terms of story... yeah, my point about Dark Souls stands. I will clarify what I mean in the spoiler box below:

Spoiler

 

In the end you beat the Hollow Knight and become the new Hollow Knight. Then the door you opened to get there closes, pretty much signifying that the cycle of creatures becoming the new Hollow Knight continues.

This ending changes drastically when finishing the last DLC. That ending sets it up for the next game, Silksong. Not sure which is considered the canon ending though.

 

 

I did enjoy playing through this game a lot now that I had the guidance of the walkthrough. I will keep an eye on how Silksong ends up. If they change the design philosophy a bit I may check it out blind, otherwise I'll be here expecting a similar guide for it, lol.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

The game overall is not hard, but the not so simple navigation of the map can make gathering everything rather annoying. By following the guide this isn't a problem because it always tries to give you the most efficient route.

 

Now when shit gets real is in the infamous Pantheons (basically boss rushes). I finished the first 4 normally. 1 through 3 are easy, but the 4th has a hard boss at the end. After seeing a boss for the first time you can go into a practice area and go at it to your heart's content. So I practiced this hard boss for a while and then finished the 4th Pantheon

 

The 5th one is when shit gets out of hand. The previous 4 pantheons have like 9 or 10 bosses, but the 5th one has like 40! Die once and it's back to square one. It doesn't help that amongst those bosses there are 2 new VERY hard ones, on top of the last boss from pantheon 4. These bosses are called Nightmare King Grimm, and the final and toughest one, Absolute Radiance.

Reaching the final few bosses takes about 1 hour, so losing at such point is very painful. Since I knew this I decided to not waste my time grinding for this hard as balls boss rush. I activated the glitch, finished the pantheon, and then beat the 2 new bosses individually in the practice area. I'm sad I will miss the thrill of overcoming such a tremendously hard challenge, but I don't feel like spending 20 hours practicing and trying just for a trophy. At this point in my life I much rather take the easy route and spend those extra hours playing another game.

[AndresLionheart]

Persona 5 Strikers

Game Difficulty: 3/10

Platinum Difficulty: 3/10

Time to Platinum: 63 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

The final piece (at the time of writing) in the Persona 5 universe. I played many musou games before, although this one is quite different.

Instead of the traditional battlefield filled with enemies and capturing bases, this game is more of an action RPG. You explore a dungeon-like area, with some light puzzle solving. Enemy groups are represented with a character walking around, and when battle is initiated a horde of enemies appear (around 50 or so) and a quick musou battle happens. When the enemies are defeated it goes back to exploring the dungeon. So, essentially, a regular Persona RPG but with musou combat.

 

There is a LOT of story content. Almost all of the main story scenes are voiced, too. The story happens during summer vacation, which is 6 months after the events of Persona 5 original, NOT Royal. This is important to mention because Kasumi, the new playable character added in Royal, doesn't exist. Also, Royal goes like 3 more months after the end of OG Persona 5. Poor Kasumi...

The story follows a similar structure to that of the original game. It's a bit more simple, though. It also feels like stuff happens too fast. This is because while the days are still a thing, there is no time management. The flow of days always happens in a set way. With no "downtime" in-between story events there isn't any time for anything to sink in. You don't get time to feel anything for the antagonists because they are gone in no time. This really takes away from the impact the story could have.

Don't get me wrong, it was still an interesting plot to follow, it just lacked that punch at the end of each chapter.

 

Gameplay-wise this game takes EVERYTHING from the Persona 5 regular turn-based battle system but puts it in an action game. Some stuff works, some other doesn't. For example, hitting enemy weaknesses is still very important because it allows the party to pull off very powerful All-out attacks. The problem is that when everything is moving fast it doesn't feel as good to stop all the action to check up on an enemy weakness and use the corresponding attack.

I kinda solved this by making a build based on Criticals. Criticals can also cause the same effect as hitting an enemy weakness but are normally a bit less effective in that. There is a passive skill that greatly increases the effect of Criticals on the enemy "down gauge" (when this gauge is depleted, they fall down, allowing the use of an all-out attack). With that passive, coupled with a crit chance accessory, high Agility and an Agility buff, I was dealing crits all the time, destroying the enemy down gauges. With that I could mostly just wail on enemies and watch stuff die =D.

 

The music remixes are great. I was kinda disappointed with the remixes in Persona 5 Dancing, but here I have no complaints. Blooming Villain especially sounded fucking amazing. It's an already hype song made even more hype.

 

 

With menues made in the same style and all the original voice actors back I couldn't help but smile. It hasn't been that long since I played Persona 5 Royal, yet I still felt like I missed the crew. It really does feel like a new chapter in the same game, albeit with a different battle system. In this they did a really good job.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

With only one missable it is fairly straight forward. This missable is also not that easy to miss as long as you are completing all requests along the way.

 

The problem arises with grinding to Bond Level 99. By the end of the game I was at level 55 or something like that. The option without going into NG+ is a tedious and boring as shit grind of a strong enemy from a repeatable request. If done that way it would take from 15 to 20 hours of grinding... It's fucking unbearable.

Thankfully there is a much better option in NG+. It does require a little bit of set up to go into Merciless difficulty with a team that makes it a breeze, but when that is ready it's smooth sailing toward the grinding spot.

 

The set up is the creation of a Persona with maxed out stats that can then inherit those max stats toward any Persona of your choosing. It's done through a fusion loop and the use of increased stats using Persona Points obtained from fighting, fusing and deleting Personas. It takes about an hour of fusing and increasing stats, but when all that is set up you can creater any amount of Personas with maxed stats, so long as you don't fuck it up and lose your Persona with the potential to inherit those stats. Make a Yoshitsune with all the crit stuff I mentioned before, any healer Persona, and a Lucifer with Ice stuff after starting NG+ and you are set to destroy everything.

 

The spot is on the second dungeon, so there is a bit of game that has to be replayed. With cutscenes skipping though you can get really fast. Getting back to there is well worth it. This enemy gives about triple the amount of Bond Exp as that other one in the first playthrough. On top of that the fight is easier, even on the Merciless difficulty it is easier than the other guy on Easy.

It was still about a 9 hour experience from the beginning of NG+ until I was at Bond level 99, so I'd guess that I was grinding for 7.5 to 8 hours. I didn't mind it that much because the fight is so mindless that I could just relax and listen to a few podcasts.

Edited April 7, 2021 by AndresLionheart

[AJ_Radio]

Good work. I sort of wish more people commented on threads like this. You definitely put work and effort in writing these reviews.

[AndresLionheart]

9 hours ago, AJ_Radio said:

Good work. I sort of wish more people commented on threads like this. You definitely put work and effort in writing these reviews.

Thank you. I've been kinda slacking on this lately, though. In the beginning I used to record video for everything and I would write on more detail. Now I kinda do it a bit faster and shorter, if I even do it.

 

I like doing it because it leaves my thoughts somewhere where I can din them later. Reading on stuff I played 2 years ago is kinda fun, and it's only gonna get better the longer I keep going.

It's even more fun when someone comments about it, but as you mentioned, that rarely happens.

[AndresLionheart]

Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus

Game Difficulty: 2/10

Platinum Difficulty: 2/10

Time to Platinum: 6 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

The  upcoming closure of PS3, Vita and PSP stores got me thinking about games I had yet to buy for PS3. There are a few I had in mind but I was still waiting for some sort of sale. Sales for these old games rarely happen, and when they happened they are usually garbage sales. Like the first fucking Hatsune Miku game being only 10% off every now and then .

This looked like a competent 3D platformer that happened in an era when I was kinda away from the genre. With easy plats attached to them I wanted to eventually try them out.

 

It is a mix between Crash and Spyro design, but with more refined movement options. Actions flow well one into the other, and the platforming precision is there, especially later into the game when more of the main abilities are unlocked.

The non-main abilities unlocked by opening the vaults in each stage feel pretty worthless, though. I mostly only used the very first one here and there. My main issue isn't that they are not that important, the issue is that they are all executed with the Triangle button. You have to switch between them with and , and that is not fun. If you give me abilities that barely matter I can't be arsed to switch between them to use them, I will just use the one selected. With the exception of , all the other shoulder buttons do nothing (or at least nothing important because I never pressed them)... would it have been too much to ask to put the Slow-mo on and the Fast-mo on ? Maybe use  + a face button for the melee moves?  

 

I like the cartoony look it has, along with the cartoony sound effects. Walking and running around makes this very distinct cartoon sneaking step sound effect too, lol.

On the voice acting I'm kinda neutral. I'm not sure if it's the voice direction or the actors but all of them have a very discernible flaw. Sly always sounds a bit too disinterested, Bentley sounds like someone acting like a nerd, etc.

 

Difficulty is low, yet it doesn't go without some weird spikes. These spikes don't happen exactly due to honest difficulty but mostly from dying in one hit. The power-ups that allow for extra hits are quite hard to come by. After dying several times on the same place the game starts you off with 1 extra hit, but that should have been the standard in my opinion.

Bosses have several phases, and dying at any point means restarting the whole thing. This is especially annoying on the final boss. It has 3 phases, and the final one is very easy to take a hit.

 

It is a fun little game, albeit too short. That's not an issue now that it comes in a collection with other 2 games (although I guess it's not gonna be a thing for long since it's not on PS4). I would have been a little disappointed if I got this on PS2 as a full priced game. Not like that could have ever happened for me since everything PS2 related was pirated down here.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

I mean... it took 6 hours, there isn't much to say tbh. I did the whole thing in one sitting. For the last world with collectables I was somewhat following a guide with the locations because those are actually hidden. That did cut possible replaying of stages.

I've heard the time trials are kinda hard, though. These are not required for the platinum, so I didn't even bother, lol. I bet that could have added like 4 more hours of playtime.

[AJ_Radio]

16 hours ago, AndresLionheart said:

Thank you. I've been kinda slacking on this lately, though. In the beginning I used to record video for everything and I would write on more detail. Now I kinda do it a bit faster and shorter, if I even do it.

 

I like doing it because it leaves my thoughts somewhere where I can din them later. Reading on stuff I played 2 years ago is kinda fun, and it's only gonna get better the longer I keep going.

It's even more fun when someone comments about it, but as you mentioned, that rarely happens.

 

I would only record video for doing GIF files. Imgur has an option to turn video files into GIFs. I might use that in the future for some games.

 

Same. I'm looking at the stuff I posted back in 2016 and I was a lot more brief. I try to get to the point but I have a knack for rambling on and on.

[AndresLionheart]

Time and Eternity

Game Difficulty: 2/10

Platinum Difficulty: 4/10

Time to Platinum: 45 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

Would you look at that. Another abandoned game that I decided to finally go back and finish. I actually played this one in 2014, stopping right at the final boss. Why did I stop? I can only guess but I would guess it was because I had to go and grind to level 70 for a trophy because levels don't carry into NG+.

I wasn't as hardcore into trophies back then. I would actually just play games casually and then check trophies when I was done (or almost done) with the story. As such I also wasn't as accepting of grinding, so I dropped the game before even finishing it.

That also means I picked up the game right at the door of the final boss. Coming back to a game after 7 years sucks. I didn't remember shit about the battle system, yet I had to face the final boss. Thankfully after having to grind to level 70 I was so strong that the final boss was dealing 0 damage with their weaker, faster attacks.

 

After finishing the game I had to go into NG+ and finish it again for a different ending that is only possible in NG+. Through this playthrough I skipped all scenes so I can only slightly recall what the story was about.

It was something about a dude marrying a cute girl but being interrupted, and killed, right there in the wedding. The girl has time powers so she goes back in time before the wedding to try and change history by dealing with the assassins beforehand.

You deal with them but then something else happens in the wedding, requiring another turning back in time to deal with this other issue that also ended up interrupting the wedding and killing the husband. This cycle repeats, and will keep repeating, due to... something I don't remember because I skipped the story. Something about a Mobius Loop. Before the 5th attempt at the wedding you can finally deal with the loop and can get married with the girl.

 

That was obviously a gross generalization of how the story goes. The girl also has another personality or something that takes over half of the time. The original girl is called Toki, the other one is Towa. I don't remember why this is a thing. The game never takes itself seriously, so any antics it pulls are accepted.

 

Now, why did I ever even get interested in this game? Well... the idea of putting 2D anime animations in a 3D game was fairly interesting. They do pull it somewhat well, too.

It was a time when I was looking into new things because it was the "brown" era of videogames. All those drab and depressing art styles made me want to look into new things.

 

There are some ecchi elements but it's pretty tame. The girls are nothing to write home about, especially considering current standards. Even a game like Atelier Ryza has sexier characters.

 

Doing this playthrough after 7 years got me thinking how I actually got to stand up with this shit of a game, though. Maps are bigger that they seem for no good reason other than to pad playtime. If you go too fast you fall behind in levels extremely quickly. I noticed all this things because I had to do this NG+ for the extra ending. I don't understand how I put up with such a boring game for over 30 hours back in 2014.

My old save had 33 hours played, where I completed every sidequest and shit. My NG+ playthrough on Easy ended up at 9 hours, which is fine, but the fucking boss of chapter 3 was 1 shotting me with its first, attack, which is unavoidable. I ended up being able to power through by using a magic resist buffing ability before she did this attack (which she thankfully only does once). Still, that was the hardest fucking fight I had in this game.

 

From what I could notice by skipping dialog I could see that there isn't much to actually see. It's very juvenile. The protagonist is a horny dude who was about to marry a cute anime girl, and he has no shame in showing how horny for her he is. It reminded me of how simple minded I was when I was like 15. As such, it feels like a 15 years old wrote all of it.

The idea of the time loop wedding that cannot happen is interesting, but everything else around it falls completely flat.

 

Wasn't for the fact that I had already finished some annoying trophies back in 2014 I wouldn't have gone back to finish this game. I would definitely NOT recommend it. Especially when...

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

Goddamn fucking RNG, man...Most trophies are not an issue, but the stupid BRONZE trophy that requires acquiring every type of meal sucks!! How does it work? When you leave home after doing some main/sidequests you have a chance that the current girl gives you a meal. She can give you any of 3 possible types of meals depending on her Love stat. There are actually 4 meals per love bracket, with 3 different brackets. There is a shitty meal, a normal meal, and a character specific meal. Since there are 2 girls, that makes it 4 meals per bracket. The problem arises when the chances of getting the girl specific meal is low as shit.

 

The brackets go from 0-49 Love, 50-99 Love, and 100+ Love. If the Love stat goes higher when you are still missing meals then you miss the trophy. The chances of the girl actually even giving a meal are never 100%. So, you do some main/sidequests, and after returning home save and hope for the best. If you don't get a meal you need you can keep reloading the save to try to get something different.

It doesn't sound so bad but the chances of getting the girl specific meals are very low. For the first bracket of meals I spent 40 minutes reloading to get Toki's meal, and 1 hour and fucking 10 minutes to get Towa's meal. For the second bracket I don't know if the chances are much higher or I got exceedingly lucky. I got Towa's meal within 4 reloads, and Toki's meal in like 10 reloads. For the final bracket I already had Towa's meal from my first playthrough, and I got Toki's meal in like 5 reloads. Again, I dunno if I got super lucky on the last 2 brackets or if the chances just fucking suck for the first bracket.

 

Other than that it is a fairly simple platinum. For the NG+ playthrough I was trying to do as little as possible so I was like 10-15 levels below the recommended level. It wasn't much of an issue except during the beginning of chapter 2 and the final boss of chapter 3 as mentioned before.

Edited April 14, 2021 by AndresLionheart

[Honor_Hand]

¡Epa, Andrés! ¿Cómo andas? Tiempo que no me pasaba por aquí. Espero andes bien, colega.

 

Not sure why I stopped reading your comments on this thread since you cook some pretty nice write-up over here. I think it's because I focus mostly on status updates and the occasional post on the MRP thread than on reading trophy checklists threads. Hell, I have a trophy checklist thread myself that I stopped updating years ago in favor of just focusing on writing statuses under my own profile. I know most people probably won't read them at all, but eh, I do them for the same purpose as yours here. Just to have a nice collection of thoughts on the games I've beaten or that I'm playing at any given moment. It's fun going back and checking out on those. And well, when people comment and interact with you, it makes them a little bit more worthwhile I must admit.

 

But anyway, I wanted to comment here because I see you played Time and Eternity on PS3 recently, a game I also played a few years back. It was nice reading your thoughts on it. And yes, the game is not too good. ? I would say it's okay-ish at best and mediocre at worst. However, I have to really applaud its idea of sticking to 2D sprites and animations for its characters and enemies. The whole notion or idea of "playing an anime", I find that very appealing. And as you said, it was certainly refreshing to see a colorful title in that age of "brown games" and "CoD me-toos" that were popping left and right. Sadly, Imagepooch (the developer) wasn't really able to deliver a proper JRPG in full force. Part of me thinks it was due to lack of funding and good direction more than anything else.

 

The story was also kind of dumb as well. Yeah, the whole Mobius Loop and time-traveling shenanigans of the girls trying to save their marriage had better potential, but instead, we have to put up with a horny protagonist and just lame writing. I mean, I can dig the horny jokes too if they are well-executed, but the writing in the game was just poor, so whatever potential the story might have had is just lost in the silly antics. I might have chuckled once or twice, but come on, you have a nice setup and you're going to do this? A few issues I remember having with the game were the poor performance during some fights in certain locations, the amount of recycled enemies and just recycled content in general, and a nasty glitch that played during the final boss fight that cut all the sound in the game for some reason, and well, how undercooked the whole game felt at times.

 

The good aspects about it were the clean visuals, with well-animated and highly detailed sprites, the battle system being actually fun, and the music, which was composed by none other than Yuzo Koshiro. Koshiro is a guy with a pretty impressive resume as far music as production goes, having worked on music gems such as the Streets of Rage, ActRaiser, Shenmue franchises, as well as many other high profile games. His contribution to Time and Eternity was only a few scores, but man, are they good. Don't tell me you didn't enjoy the music in Time and Eternity. =P

 

Read over a few of your other recent game Platinums and me thinks I should really try Trials of Mana. Lol, you salivating over Angela really convinced me to check that game out. Such a hotty. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana is also on my radar as well. Haven't played a single game in the Ys series but it's good to know that you can play that one without tried the others.

 

 

[AndresLionheart]

@Honor_Hand Hey! It's been a while indeed. I like doing these in a thread because it seems to be easier to organize them. I can keep editing the first post and link to each individual game write-up.

I'm actually subbed to your thread and I have most other notifications turned off, so I only see your status updates if I manually check your profile.

It's definitely more fun when someone reads them and comments, that's for sure.

 

The art direction is is stronger suit. It gives the game its own identity. As far as I know there aren't other games that do this. I can see why, though. It's defintely much more costly to make a game like this instead of using good ol' cel-shading on 3D models. This is also why enemies are recycled so much, too. I'm fine with enemy recolors but they also use recolors of secondary characters as regular enemies, like the ninja girl that hangs out with the baker dude. Those should not be reused as regular enemies.

 

So it wasn't my PS3 or something lagging on some battles then, it was the game. I had some battles go to like 15 fps or something, which sucks even more because it eats your inputs on the dropped frames. It was so hard to dodge, lol.

 

It was also a time I was kinda getting into ecchi games, so that was another reason to check this one out.

Since I was skipping all the text just to get the platinum I only got to read some lines here and there, but I remember the protagonist was so lame.

 

In terms of music... other than the battle theme I don't remember it from 7 years ago. I actually played the game with low volume while I listened to several podcasts, lol.

They do pull off the style graphic style quite nice, though. It kinda fucks up a bit when the camera does a fast cut to other angles, but most of the time it looks convincing.

 

It's kinda funny that I'm crapping on the horny protag from Time and Eternity but here I am salivating over Angela from Trials of Mana xD. You should try them both out. Nothing midblowing but fun games nonetheless. I was especially surprised by Trials of Mana. It's a SNES RPG with modern graphics.

Ys VIII was really fun on the first playthrough, but the second playthrough on Nightmare was kind of a slog. Without the magic and mystery of exploring the island it becomes less enjoyable.

 

I will try to check your profile more often to see what you are up to. As for me I'm in sort of a PS3 mood right now. The upcoming closure of the store got me thinking on games I still wanted to play and/or finish.

[Honor_Hand]

@AndresLionheart That's a good point right there. The biggest downside of the status updates is not being able to edit them once you've published them, which is all kinds of weird if you ask me. You certainly have a better degree of control on that here. If anything happens and I want to rethread a game I already wrote about, I have to write a brand new status about it.

 

Yeah, I really cannot think of any other game that ever tried fully animated HD sprites to make an RPG. I mean, we have had HD sprites in fighting games and small low-resolution sprites in some indie and old-school RPGs that have come out, but anything of this caliber on a JRPGs is kind of unheard of. I really cannot think of any other game that tried what Time and Eternity did. But yeah, 2D animation is on the decline due to how costly it is nowadays. That's why many fighting games have jumped to 3D cel-shaded models instead. Take the newest Guilty Gear, Samurai Shodown, and the upcoming King of Fighters as an example. I really love 2D sprites, they have their own charm too you know. But 3D is what sells nowadays.

 

Lmao, I know what you mean with the dodging. There were places in which it was impossible for me to dodge as well due to the frame drops.

 

Oh, no way. The music was great! >.< There was very little music, like probably a dozen or so tracks but it's that kind of adventurish, very JRPG-ish music you would expect. Very well done actually. I liked to hum some of the themes while walking around on the overworld, haha.

 

Quote

It's kinda funny that I'm crapping on the horny protag from Time and Eternity but here I am salivating over Angela from Trials of Mana xD. You should try them both out. Nothing midblowing but fun games nonetheless. I was especially surprised by Trials of Mana. It's a SNES RPG with modern graphics.

 

I know, right? xxD I read that and I was like, "Damn, Andrés is complaining about the horny prota here, and a few posts above he was all horny for Angela". Like, lol, make up your mind. Nah, but it's alright, I know what you mean. The male lead in Time and Eternity was just lame. ? Yeah, I have heard this Trials of Mana is a remake. I never played the original on the SNES but I knew it was very well-regarded. And well, now that I know it has such a hottie in it in the remake, I have more reasons to play it. ^^

 

Quote

I will try to check your profile more often to see what you are up to. As for me I'm in sort of a PS3 mood right now. The upcoming closure of the store got me thinking on games I still wanted to play and/or finish.

 

Awesome, thanks! Same here, I'm going to try to work mostly on Vita and PS3 games in the upcoming days.

 

[AndresLionheart]

Sly 2: Band of Thieves

Game Difficulty: 2/10

Platinum Difficulty: 1/10

Time to Platinum: 13 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

An improvement in every way. I've kinda speedrunning these PS3 games lately, so it's only been a week since I played Sly 1.

While Sly 1 felt more like a Crash game with its corridor-style levels. Sly 2 takes a more open approach, which garners it its own identity. Now you explore a single big area with a few sub areas, doing missions that all culminate in a heist-like mission. The mechanics utilized in the mission are then put to the test in the final one. Pretty simple and effective design philosophy.

 

This mission style also makes it so you actually do more thieve-like things. In the previous game being a thief was bringing nothing to important to the gameplay. Sly could have been a pirate and nothing would have changed. In this one the main objective is stealing things.

The other 2 characters also take a more important role. Although Murray has a completely different personality. He used to be dumb and shy, now he is still kinda dumb but is confident in his strength and what he does.

 

Many of the problems I had with the first game are solved or at least improved upon. You can now equip special abilities to the shoulder buttons (except R1 because that one is reserver for sprinting and gliding). That's 3 abilities you can have easy access to. On top of that abilities are more useful altogether. For example I kept the Smoke Bombs the whole game because it was so useful to be able to easily get out of enemies sight, not only to run away, but also to stealth kill the bigger ones in front of their faces.

There is also a health bar and no lives. Being able to take several hits without having to worry about dying so easily makes it less frustrating. Not having lives is the more modern approach, too.

 

Movement as Sly is still the best part, although I feel like the auto-aiming the game does to easily jump to small surfaces was less reliable. Several times it made me go to places below me that I couldn't even see.

This port overall seemed a bit more rushed. Some details were not taken into account when switching the game to 16:9. Screen transitions use an overlay that doesn't fill the whole screen. You can see the edges on both sides which the overlay fails to cover. Then there was this one scene where Murray is supposed to be entering a building through a window while the camera pans to the right, but since there is a bigger field of view now you can see how Murray is just standing there by the window.

 

The game story is divided in 8 areas, most of which were fun to explore. The ones that were a bit frustrating are Episode 4 and 5. My problem with those is that there is a lot of verticality while not having enough ways to easily climb. This ends up in a lot of walking around trying to find a tube or something you can climb on to then walk over a wire to the are you actually wanted to go. The fluidity of the gameplay is this game's strongest suit. Letting them player utilize that fluidity should always be a priority.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

Another short and simple one. This time around you only need to collect the clue bottles in one of the 8 areas. I still collected them in all 8 because it was fun to find them thanks to the sound the bottles make.

 

Having 1500 coins on hand is easy too. The guide here said to destroy everything and steal from every enemy. I found it much more efficient to only steal from enemies that had items in their pockets and to steal items in each area that have to be carried over to the base. These items are worth A LOT. Is not worth wasting time pickpocketing everyone and going out of the way to destroy object.

As long as you prioritize buying only the upgrades that are required for trophies you will not need to go out and grind for money. There are plenty more upgrades that are very expensive, so looking up the trophies to check which to buy is important.

 

Kinda sucks that these have the same Platinum icon. At least put a "2" on the icon D=.

[AJ_Radio]

Really didn’t like the unskippable cutscenes in Sly 2. Would of liked it to just skip Bentley’s dialogue. Not a bad game at all. 
 

Carmelita had the best voice in this game.

[Honor_Hand]

A veritable improvement over the first game. I think what really gave Sly its identity as a thief is that you're actually doping more thief-like things in this game, versus in the first game where you had a plot related to thieves but you never feel like one in the game. It's very well done and enjoyable for its time. The third game continues what this one started but I tend to prefer this one over that last entry in the PS2, personally.

 

Quote

Movement as Sly is still the best part, although I feel like the auto-aiming the game does to easily jump to small surfaces was less reliable. Several times it made me go to places below me that I couldn't even see.

 

Uff, I remember this, lol. It was a nice escape maneuver but you could end up in some places with some awkward camera angles as a result.

 

Quote

Kinda sucks that these have the same Platinum icon. At least put a "2" on the icon D=.

 

Agreed. The whole porting does feel a bit rushed, as you mentioned. It's not bad but it could've certainly used a bit more love in some areas. At least add some different JPEGs for the trophy icons in later games, goddammit!

 

I did this whole series on PS3 and it was fun to experience as I never played these games on PS2. I might revisit them again on Vita at some later point. Additionally, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time is a game I'm missing from my collection and that I need to experience as well.

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by Honor_Hand

[AndresLionheart]

Prototype

Game Difficulty: 4/10

Platinum Difficulty: 8/10

Time to Platinum: 40 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

With a real time of 11 years, 9 months and 3 days, this is now my slowest Platinum! That should actually be a milestone for the profiles here.

I played this one about one month after it originally released. It was a time when I didn't have much money, so I couldn't afford many games. I was really looking forward to playing this one because it looked so fucking cool! Running around, jumping and gliding across a city as a super powered dude never looked as good.

 

Going back into it I can now see how bad the framerate was, and the graphics are rough, too. I didn't even remember this was an Activision game. It's kinda weird booting the game up, seeing the Activision logo, but then see that is a complete game without a single microtransaction (which were either not a thing that existed yet, or not as common).

Another thing I noticed is that it only got a minor patch once. When I installed the game it downloaded patch 1.01, which based on the number I would say it was a minor patch probably to fix some spelling error or a minor glitch.

 

I can't say much about the story because I skipped cutscenes this time around. I do remember the main plot twist, but that's about it.

 

Moving around is still fun, albeit with some weird control choices. Combat is way worse than I remembered. Dodging has no iframes and moves don't flow together well.

The city is smaller than I remember, too. For some reason I thought it was bigger than just Manhattan.

 

I'm struggling for words here. I don't have much to say about the game. Now about that Platinum...

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

One of  my reasons to come back to this platinum was the fact that I already had most of it done from my casual years. One of the most difficult parts of it is getting platinum scores in every single event. Apparently I did all that from one day to the next considering the time between when I got all the Golds and when I got all the Platinums (you have to get all golds first before the platinums are unlocked).

With that being said, I cannot say much of the other miscellaneous trophies because I don't remember when I got them.

 

What I had pending to do was finishing the game on Hard difficulty (which is unlocked after finishing the game once), killing 53596 infected and collecting all 200 landmarks. These 200 landmarks are the reason I didn't finish the plat back then. I wanted to do them on my current 100% normal playthrough but since I had already gathered a bunch, checking back each area to see which I was missing was more difficult than simply starting over, since checking for something you may have already gotten from a map could mean you actually miss it when rechecking due to altitudes not taken into account on a flat map. I don't think there were video guides at that point yet. Remember that I played this only 1 month after it released.

 

Getting all 200 landmarks while doing the Hard playthrough is a good idea because it gives some very useful Evolution Points right off the bat to make it slighlty easier. Anyway, with a video guide ready I popped the disc in and- It has to install? Weird, I don't remember ever deleting anything on this console. After installing I go in, select new game and- Why isn't Hard an option? I check my saves and then it hit me... This was NOT the same PS3 I played the game on for the first time. That one was stolen in 2009, along with all my other consoles.

So, now that meant I would have to beat the game on Easy or Normal just to unlock hard. That already killed my enthusiasm for finishing this plat. Thankfully I got the idea of trying if someone elses save would unlock Hard. I download a finished game save on Normal and checked if it did work. While I couldn't load the save because it belongs to another user, it did unlock Hard! That was a relief. Since I had already gotten the first playthrough trophies legitimately I can use that save to unlock Hard, but if you haven't done a playthrough first don't do this because your trophies will be out of order.

 

Anyway, I peacefully followed the video guide to collect all 200 landmarks and then proceeded to breeze through the game, or at least I would like to say it was a fun and enjoying "breeze". You see, Hard difficulty is fine for like half of the game, it's challenging but nothing terrible. For the second half though... holy fucking shit. It's not hard, it's just plain fucking annoying to play!

Enemies pile on you, interrupting your attacks all the time. Military units have godlike accuracy. There are probably many more enemies than usual. On later missions it becomes a clusterfuck.

Good news is that there is a very simple to execute glitch that makes you invulnerable. The only bad thing with this glitch is that it goes away if you fail a mission and have to restart from a checkpoint. While you cannot fail missions by dying, you can still fail on missions that have other objectives, like protecting a structure or having to weaken something but not kill it (don't be like me, read mission objectives before pulling off your screen clearing attack, lol). If you fail you have to exit the mission altogether, losing your checkpoint, and go to reactivate the glitch.

Even when I couldn't take damage some fights were still annoying as shit. With so much shit flying around you still get interrupted all the time. Hard mode is not fun in any way.

 

For last I had the trophy for killing 53596 infected (dunno if this is a random number or it means something). Since I didn't do any optional content my kill count was at like 2000... Grinding kills is not that bad, though.

There is an event called Rolling Thunder. You are given the strongest type of tank and have to kill a bunch of infected for 2 minutes. After a few attempts I optimized the shit out of that event. My route was start the event by killing the stuff around the area while I point my tank's front to the south. Then I would go south while shotting behind me (then tank is going toward the screen). I did it this way because the tank's strongest attack has a shitton of recoil, which normally slows you down, but if you shoot behind you it actually pushes you, letting you cover more ground. Shooting back also means that enemies that come from the sides trying to follow the tank get themselves on the line of fire. I also go south because there is an infected area to that direction (if you didn't destroy the hive), that means more basic infected pedestrians.

Now here is the other trick. The event is 2 minutes long, so after 1 minute of driving straight I would turn around the tank and go back the way I came (again, with the tank's front pointing forward, in this case, north. This is because when the tank is going forward it goes faster than in reverse). By doing this I would end up around the same place where I started. Enemies respawn along the way, so that's not an issue. The good thing about ending where you started is that the game doesn't need to load when you press on the event result screen to try again. As I said, I optimized the shit out of that event. 

One last point to keep in mind is that not all the infected you kill in the event gives you points for it. That's fine because you don't care about the points, just the kill count. So killing everything is worth it.

With that strategy I got the 52000 or so kills I was missing in 2 hours.

 

While Hard was not fun to play, I'm glad I came back to finish this one. Not only because it's nice to see games at 100%, but also because it was 4 new Ultra Rares =P.

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by AndresLionheart

[AndresLionheart]

23 hours ago, AJ_Radio said:

Really didn’t like the unskippable cutscenes in Sly 2. Would of liked it to just skip Bentley’s dialogue. Not a bad game at all. 

Yeah, I should have mentioned that as well. A few times I had to leave the mission area, only to then come back and have to sit through the explanation again...

 

4 hours ago, Honor_Hand said:

A veritable improvement over the first game. I think what really gave Sly its identity as a thief is that you're actually doping more thief-like things in this game, versus in the first game where you had a plot related to thieves but you never feel like one in the game. It's very well done and enjoyable for its time. The third game continues what this one started but I tend to prefer this one over that last entry in the PS2, personally.

I kinda got a little lazy with the third game only because it appearently actually requires some skill due to some challenge missions.

It's good to know that Sly 3 is more like Sly 2, though.

Edited April 18, 2021 by AndresLionheart

[Honor_Hand]

That moment when you come back to a game after more than 11 years of the last time you played it and you don't remember shit about it because, well, it's been 11 damn years, lol. ?

 

Yeah, Activision hadn't grown their microtransaction fangs and claws of today back at that time. Looking back on it, that's actually quite cute. It goes to show how different things were back then. I always remember this game alongside Infamous, since both had this free roam "hero" type character that could do anything he wanted around a city. I played Infamous and its sequel on PS3 but I never got around trying this one. It must've gotten a decent amount of success too because it got a sequel, and only recently I learned both games also got remastered for PS4.

 

As for Platinum hunting endeavors, hard sounds like it was a reasonably tough time. I hate that shit when enemies gangbang on you on video games and they don't let you do a single fucking thing. It's the kind of difficulty that feels cheap by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, I'm sure it can be countered even without using a glitch, but that doesn't make it feel any less cheap. ?

 

Good idea to unlock hard there. Btw, I'm sorry to hear all of your consoles got stolen back in 2009. I'd be extremely furious and sad if something like that happened to me.

 

Quote

For last I had the trophy for killing 53596 infected (dunno if this is a random number or it means something). Since I didn't do any optional content my kill count was at like 2000... Grinding kills is not that bad, though.

 

Oh, yeah. It means something. I remember I had a similar number when I played Dead Nation, which is another zombie-killing game. Here's a good explanation for it. It seems Iit's just developers taking jabs at each other with how many zombies they can have in their games.

 

Quote

While Hard was not fun to play, I'm glad I came back to finish this one. Not only because it's nice to see games at 100%, but also because it was 4 new Ultra Rares =P.

 

Dígalo. Nada como ver esos juegos al 100%, ¿verdad? Incluso si terminamos odiándolos en el proceso, lol. xxD

 

[AndresLionheart]

11 hours ago, Honor_Hand said:

Btw, I'm sorry to hear all of your consoles got stolen back in 2009. I'd be extremely furious and sad if something like that happened to me.

Yeah, it was a pretty bad time. The good thing is that they didn't take any games, which are more expensive and easier to carry than the old consoles they took too, like my N64 and PS1.

 

I did lose 2 games that really hurt, though. One was Tales of Vesperia (it was inside the PS3 since I was playing it at the time. Japanese copy that cost like $80 back then), and Tales of Symphonia for GC (complete in box. I had some cash inside it. I told one of the dudes that the cash was there but the piece of shit took the whole game instead of taking out the cash . After that I never kept cash inside a game's case ever again. I did buy new copies of those games and all the systems again.

 

11 hours ago, Honor_Hand said:

Oh, yeah. It means something. I remember I had a similar number when I played Dead Nation, which is another zombie-killing game. Here's a good explanation for it. It seems Iit's just developers taking jabs at each other with how many zombies they can have in their games.

Ah, I see. So it started because it was Colorado's population and then other zombie games followed it as a joke by one upping each other adding 1 more every time, lol.

 

11 hours ago, Honor_Hand said:

As for Platinum hunting endeavors, hard sounds like it was a reasonably tough time. I hate that shit when enemies gangbang on you on video games and they don't let you do a single fucking thing. It's the kind of difficulty that feels cheap by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, I'm sure it can be countered even without using a glitch, but that doesn't make it feel any less cheap.

I was probably missing some mechanic or something. I mean, I started playing on Hard after almost 12 years and I just rushed the game.

[Honor_Hand]

15 hours ago, AndresLionheart said:

Yeah, it was a pretty bad time. The good thing is that they didn't take any games, which are more expensive and easier to carry than the old consoles they took too, like my N64 and PS1.

 

I did lose 2 games that really hurt, though. One was Tales of Vesperia (it was inside the PS3 since I was playing it at the time. Japanese copy that cost like $80 back then), and Tales of Symphonia for GC (complete in box. I had some cash inside it. I told one of the dudes that the cash was there but the piece of shit took the whole game instead of taking out the cash . After that I never kept cash inside a game's case ever again. I did buy new copies of those games and all the systems again.

 

Yeah, no kidding. It must've sucked big time. At least they only took the consoles and not the games. I live in a dangerous zone too (well...pretty much most of Latin America can be classed as insecure), and the fear of having my stuff is stolen is constant. It hasn't happened to me yet, but damn.

 

At least you were able to eventually recover those 2 games you lost by buying new copies, but man, talk about losing two very rare and expensive pieces of gaming at the time.

[AJ_Radio]

I had a different experience from you two guys since you're both from South America. Nintendo 64 games were still more expensive than PS1 games were, but since I was such a Mario fanboy at that time I had my parents both get games for me.

 

Compared to both of you, my country is a lot more soft. We're quick to be fucking woke and SJWs (social justice warriors) about something, rarely do we actually take action. The George Floyd murder still has everyone in a frenzy and it's been that way for a entire year here in the US. The sad truth is this kind of shit happens every day. Some racist and/or corrupt cop kills an innocent person or someone that didn't deserve to die, and social media blows up all over again. It's really getting old.

 

As far as PS3 games are concerned, I think it's safe to say that I generally have to work harder to earn a platinum in a PS3 game than I do for a PS4 game. I honestly feel that there was a real trophy standard over a decade ago. Indie games generally couldn't get a platinum, AAA games for the most part demanded a lot of time and effort from the player to earn that platinum.

 

How HITMAN 2, which I admit is a pretty decent reboot, doesn't have a platinum but the absolute bullshit that is Breakthrough Gaming Arcade get a bunch of joke platinums is beyond me. That is why the platinum count in my opinion is worthless. The individual platinum trophies and the experience you've gone through to earn them are far more important.