Dantes_994 Posted July 14, 2018 Share Posted July 14, 2018 2 hours ago, AndresLionheart said: You should try it. Sometimes I feel even more compelled to finish up a game because I want to write out my thought about it. I'm so hyped for Vesperia! I already got the Plat on the PS3 version and also got 1000/1000 on a friend's Xbox 360. But this time I get to finally experience the full version in english. I'll be recording a full playthrough with a friend just like how I'm doing with Secret of Mana. I'm on the same boat as you with Zestiria. I got bored 2 or 3 hours in, so I'm not that qualified to say much about it. As it stands, it's the worst one yet, even bellow Legendia. With my obviously extended knowledge of it in my mind, I wouldn't recommend it. I will still play it, though, because I have the objective of getting every Tales of platinum. Damn every tales platinum? Awesome work Did you play Tales of graces? I actually finished it on my old profile but damn that one is the worst for me Zestiria at the least had good character design, but the story was so boring for me and the world could not have been more bland -.- Having said that I am hyped as ever for both Vesperia and the unnounced Tales game What are your favorite Tales games? Mine are 1. Berseria 2. Abyss 3. Xillia I have never actually played Vesperia but I watched a full playthrough back when it came out 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndresLionheart Posted July 14, 2018 Author Share Posted July 14, 2018 (edited) 1 hour ago, Johnathan994 said: Damn every tales platinum? Awesome work Did you play Tales of graces? I actually finished it on my old profile but damn that one is the worst for me Zestiria at the least had good character design, but the story was so boring for me and the world could not have been more bland -.- Having said that I am hyped as ever for both Vesperia and the unnounced Tales game What are your favorite Tales games? Mine are 1. Berseria 2. Abyss 3. Xillia I have never actually played Vesperia but I watched a full playthrough back when it came out I'm not far off from my objective, all I have left to plat is Zestiria and Symphonia (not counting the Japan only Tales of Innocence). This means that yes, I have played Graces f and gotten the platinum. It was back when I still wasn't using guides. I did all that stuff playing and researching on my own on forums and databases. It was quite the trip. Lately I've seen a lot of people didn't like that one but I actually remember having a great time. I like most of the character designs, Sophie and Hubert were kinda bland, though. I intended in doing a whole playthrough soloing bosses, but by that third playthrough I had been playing the game for over a month and I was kinda wanting to move on to something else. I did record 2 of the bosses, though! Here is one that shows one of the things I loved about this game: being able to use Mystic Artes based on the combo count and even being allow to combo AFTER them (switching stances was super cool, too) My favorites would be: 1) Symphonia (nostalgia on top of being good) 2) Vesperia 3) Xillia Edited July 14, 2018 by AndresLionheart Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndresLionheart Posted July 16, 2018 Author Share Posted July 16, 2018 (edited) Secret of Mana Game Difficulty: 4 Platinum Difficulty: 4 Time to Platinum: 28 hours Thoughts on the game If anyone is interested, in the spoiler tag you can find a cut I made of the last portion of the final boss along with the credits where me and my friend share our thoughts. It's in spanish, specifically argentinean spanish, so if you can't understand or dislike the accent, you have been warned =P. I'll be uploading the full playthrough, too. Spoiler I didn't play the SNES version back in the day (I didn't have a SNES because I had a Genesis and then I went straight to the N64), but I did play it a few years ago with this same friend that now played the PS4 version with me. We got to about the halfway point of the game and then lost interest. Still, just with what we played we could see why it was one of the classics from the SNES era. Multiplayer action RPGs are not something you find every day. It took us a little over 4 months to finish it along with the Platinum because we could only play on some weekends when we both were available. We started during patch 1.00, when the game had a lot of crashes that were just recently fixed on patch 1.03, which came out 3 weeks ago. By this point we were almost done with the game, so it was a bit annoying. The game auto saves every time you change rooms so each crash is not devastating, but it is bothersome regardless. During our time we experienced about 7 crashes. Game mechanics were made a little faster so it is definitely an improvement over the SNES version. Before you had to wait for the enemy to completely stand up before attacking again, but now that window was made wider so that it is faster to pile on damage on each enemy. The graphics may not be top notch but get the job done with its cartoony style and vibrant colors. The updated music is good, too, but for those who have nostalgia ears there is also a choice to have the original music. I played as the girl (Primm, who we called Andy, a shorter version of my name mostly used for girls that are called Andrea), who has healing and other defensive spells, and my friend played as the main character (Randy, who we called Hache, my friend's nickname). During the beginning, boss fights were a bit boring because there aren't many options in battle, but after getting my healing spells and some buffs I had more fun keeping the party alive =) There was this one boss we had a little trouble with because he would just keep healing. We lost twice there and during the third attempt, without doing much different, we killed it because it just didn't feel like healing. I don't know what was up with that thing. The other part that sucks is the second to last dungeon, Pure Land. It's very long and the enemies there deal a lot of damage. Even with some very good rare gear we farmed before and being overleveled, those thing could still wipe us if we weren't careful. On the other hand, the bosses in that dungeon died like nothing. We got lost a few times, even when the game includes a guide that tells you in a few words where to go next. One time we went to the completely wrong place, the Fire Temple, a higher level dungeon that was kicking our asses, because we were looking for the Fire Spirit. It turned out the Fire Spirit was in the Ice Area... I don't recall exactly but I'm pretty sure with got stuck and made that exact same mistake when we played the SNES version. Thoughts on the Platinum Everything is fun and games until the stupid Eggplant Man in Underground City. There are a few pieces of equipment that can only be obtained as rare drops from certain enemies. Most of those pieces I got in 10 to 20 minutes of farming, but the Wizard Ring (drop from Eggplant Man) took me over 2 hours! Because of that I also ended up overleveled as hell, which made several parts of the game extremely easy. There are also 3 pieces of equipment that are missable because they are rare drops from enemies exclusive to Pure Land, the most annoying dungeon. There are a lot of trees blocking the view and enemies hit very hard. Screw you, Griffin Hands!! The other annoying part is getting the last weapon orbs to upgrade all weapons to level 9. Most of the orbs are obtained as boss drops or from chests in dungeons and some houses, but even if you don't miss any (we found all) you still have to farm at least 1 for each weapon orb plus an extra one for the Axe and the Gloves. That's 10 orbs that have to be farmed in the last dungeon. Just like with the equipment, it can take from 10 to 20 minutes each. Still, all this farming doesn't sound like much, but since I was playing it with a friend, we could only do so much every time he came over. If possible I would farm on my own time, but sometimes we would be at points where progressing on the game would make some equipment more difficult to farm or just outright impossible. Due to this a lot of our shared time was lost having to farm, which ended up making this platinum take me over 4 months to complete. The Media Corner The last boss can almost only be damaged by the Mana Sword. Since the battle took a while I just cut to his last cycle of his attacks to show what the fight is about. After that, I also cut the credits to get to when the Platinum pops because the credits take like 12 minutes to finish. Popping the Platinum Edited July 17, 2018 by AndresLionheart 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Honor_Hand Posted July 16, 2018 Share Posted July 16, 2018 Soooo... ¿Asi es como el pibe Andres suena en Español? No te preocupes por el acento lol Me parecio interesante escuchar los comentarios tuyos y de tu amigo al final del juego. Puntos extra por haber recordado a Commandos 2 como un excelente juego de su epoca. Yo no lo juegue tanto pero mi esposa si que es super fanatica del mismo ja ja ja Now, 28 hours for the Platinum sounds pretty short by JRPG standards. I understand the game is an action RPG but it still sounds awfully short. How much time did you guys take on completing the main storyline? Even so, multiplayer action RPGs aren't really that common, so I guess that for that reason alone it is a game worth experiencing. Never had a chance to play this one on the SNES. It's good that we get the chance to play a revamped version of it with a more reasonable price tag (because I am pretty sure the original cartridge of that game may be worth its weight on gold lol). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndresLionheart Posted July 17, 2018 Author Share Posted July 17, 2018 52 minutes ago, Honor_Hand said: Soooo... ¿Asi es como el pibe Andres suena en Español? No te preocupes por el acento lol Me parecio interesante escuchar los comentarios tuyos y de tu amigo al final del juego. Puntos extra por haber recordado a Commandos 2 como un excelente juego de su epoca. Yo no lo juegue tanto pero mi esposa si que es super fanatica del mismo ja ja ja Now, 28 hours for the Platinum sounds pretty short by JRPG standards. I understand the game is an action RPG but it still sounds awfully short. How much time did you guys take on completing the main storyline? Even so, multiplayer action RPGs aren't really that common, so I guess that for that reason alone it is a game worth experiencing. Never had a chance to play this one on the SNES. It's good that we get the chance to play a revamped version of it with a more reasonable price tag (because I am pretty sure the original cartridge of that game may be worth its weight on gold lol). Yo jugue muchisimo al Commandos y el Commandos 2 =D. Hace poco hubo una oferta en Steam con los 3 mas la expansion del primero por monedas, asi que algun dia de estos los volvere a jugar por un rato. For a JRPG is pretty light on dialogue and cutscenes, that's why it doesn't take that long. It also takes less time because battles are in real time and easy to avoid if needed. The thing with length of the storyline is that you have to stop at certain points to farm some stuff. So both my final time and platinum time would be equal. If I had to make a guess on how long it takes if you just want to finish it, I'd say about 18 hours. The same stands true for other great JRPGs of the time, like Chrono Trigger, which clocks at about 12 hours to finish. For what I played from Phantasia (like 10 hours) I'd say that is actually a much longer one. It's actually not that expensive of a game on SNES, at least not if it's the cartridge only. The problem with buying SNES games is that there are a lot of reproduction carts that work just like the original game, but are not original. Still, this PS4 version makes it a lot less punishing if you die because it auto saves all the time. Back in the SNES version if you were in a dungeon for an hour and died to the boss, you had to do the entire dungeon again from your last save (which was usually at an Inn). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Honor_Hand Posted July 17, 2018 Share Posted July 17, 2018 (edited) 45 minutes ago, AndresLionheart said: Yo jugue muchisimo al Commandos y el Commandos 2 =D. Hace poco hubo una oferta en Steam con los 3 mas la expansion del primero por monedas, asi que algun dia de estos los volvere a jugar por un rato. For a JRPG is pretty light on dialogue and cutscenes, that's why it doesn't take that long. It also takes less time because battles are in real time and easy to avoid if needed. The thing with length of the storyline is that you have to stop at certain points to farm some stuff. So both my final time and platinum time would be equal. If I had to make a guess on how long it takes if you just want to finish it, I'd say about 18 hours. The same stands true for other great JRPGs of the time, like Chrono Trigger, which clocks at about 12 hours to finish. For what I played from Phantasia (like 10 hours) I'd say that is actually a much longer one. It's actually not that expensive of a game on SNES, at least not if it's the cartridge only. The problem with buying SNES games is that there are a lot of reproduction carts that work just like the original game, but are not original. Still, this PS4 version makes it a lot less punishing if you die because it auto saves all the time. Back in the SNES version if you were in a dungeon for an hour and died to the boss, you had to do the entire dungeon again from your last save (which was usually at an Inn). Hace un par de meses le compre a mi esposa un DVD que traia una compilacion de 5 juegos de la serie (Commandos - Behind Enemy Lines, Commandos - Beyond The Call of Duty, Commandos 2 - Men of Courage, Commandos 3 - Destination Berlin y Commandos Strike Force). Este mismo de aqui. Me lo he conseguido en el mercado libre local por tan solo $6-7 USD. El problema fue hacer que el juego funcionara en su laptop con Windows 10. El Strike Force no hubo problemas y los 3 primeros solo requerieron un fix menor en unos archivos para que funcionara pero el Commandos 3 fue un sendo problema hacerlo funcionar. En el transcurso de mi investigacion para hacer correr el juego, me parece haber encontrado una conversacion en los foros de Steam que la version de alli tambien tiene problemas para funcionar en equipos con Windows 8 y 10. Te lo comento para que estes pendiente. ? Oh, I see older JRPGs are kind of short then. Lol I finished my first playthrough of Tales of Symphonia a couple of weeks ago and it took me like 60 hours. Then again, that's me just talking with all the NPCs and their dogs and just wasting time in general. I just checked for the price of a Secret of Mana SNES cartridge on eBay and, you're right, it is not that expensive. Around $20-35 sounds about right for the game. Edit; Damn! Out of rep points again... Edited July 17, 2018 by Honor_Hand 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndresLionheart Posted July 19, 2018 Author Share Posted July 19, 2018 (edited) Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon Game Difficulty: 5 (in Veteran Difficulty) Completion Difficulty: 4 Time to Complete: 10 hours Thoughts on the game I'm a backer for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and I didn't even remember we met some stretch goal that gave us this awesome throwback to the NES Castlevania games. When I first saw it I thought it was just a spinoff game that had nothing to do with the main title, but after finishing it it seems like a prologue to what's coming. I'm not following the development of the game too closely because I want to be as blind as possible when I get to play it, so I don't read much of the update emails I get from the developers. This game looks and sounds exactly like how an HD NES game would look if we never got any more advancements in technology (other than HD, I guess). Every sprite, song and sound effect brings me back to when I was a small 4 years-old boy getting into games. In other words, I loved the presentation. Gameplay-wise it is basically NES Castlevania, but there are a bunch of split paths that require different characters and/or abilities to get through. On a first playthrough, getting all the characters and switching between them to utilize all their strengths gives the game much more thought that what any of the NES games had, which is a perfect improvement over the old formula. It is farily short but there are a few different endings and an specific extra mode that changes the final stage and boss. This extra final boss was awesome to beat, too. All in all, this little game gives me high hopes for Ritual of the Night to be the first great game I backed (my others were Mighty No. Shit and Yooka-Laylee). Thoughts on the completion Every trophy can get obtained while playing on Casual Difficulty. In this difficulty enemies deal less damage and bosses have less health, you have infinite lives, more Weapon Points (used to activate secondary weapons) and taking damage doesn't cause kncokback, so you can't die from being thrown into a pit! I did my first run on Veteran to experience the game as it should have been, but then I completed several of the extra endings on Casual just to breeze through the game, except for the Bad Ending which I also did on Veteran because I was gonna record it and I didn't want to play in pussy mode on camera =P. The only trophy that could have caused trouble would have been the Boss Rush Mode because the items and heals are very limited, but there are a bunch of cheats to make it stupid easy which, of course, do not block the trophy from being obtained. A Special Announcement I wasn't gonna write about this game but it turned out to be a lot of fun. Also, have an extra code that I figured I had give to someone in some way. Please let me know if you get it so I can edit this and not make other people waste time trying to claim it. Claimed Spoiler Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (PS4) - D4EJ-7MNT-HG5N The Media Corner I finally started uploading some of the stuff about this game. Down here I'll post a full playthrough doing the Emperor of Darkness trophy. Also, over in my Youtube channel I'll be uploading my first playthrough with commentary in spanish. A pretty nice run. It was my first time doing that and was also the first thing I played that day, so I was a bit cold at points. Edited August 4, 2018 by AndresLionheart 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Honor_Hand Posted July 19, 2018 Share Posted July 19, 2018 lol Poor Andres would have lost all of his street cred if we saw him playing Pussy mode on camera In all seriousness though, nice to hear that you ended up liking a game you backed up. I'm not going to even ask about Mighty No. 9 but, did you like Yooka-Laylee? Just curious. As for this throwback, yes. It looks great. A friend of mine recommended the game to me not so long ago and I thought it looked spectacular for what I saw on Youtube. It is pretty much a reimagining of Castlevania III but, well, with different characters and probably a huge #fuckkonami invisible image on the background but you get the idea. I never had the chance to play any of the classic Castlevanias back then and my first introduction to the franchise was with the less-than-stellar games on the N64. This game, however, looks like a great throwback to that classic era of gaming and it should be rightfully experienced by all those gamers that still cherish that particular era. As for the code (Yep, I tried to claim it even though I don't have a PS4 >.>), it looks like someone has already made use of it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndresLionheart Posted July 19, 2018 Author Share Posted July 19, 2018 7 hours ago, Honor_Hand said: lol Poor Andres would have lost all of his street cred if we saw him playing Pussy mode on camera In all seriousness though, nice to hear that you ended up liking a game you backed up. I'm not going to even ask about Mighty No. 9 but, did you like Yooka-Laylee? Just curious. As for the code (Yep, I tried to claim it even though I don't have a PS4 >.>), it looks like someone has already made use of it. Initially I wasn't planning on recording that run, but my friend wanted to see me do that solo run and I figured I might as well play it in man mode for the bragging rights, lol. Yooka-Laylee is okay. It feels like an old school 3D collect-a-thon but something didn't click with me so far. I will go back to finish it at some point, but I would rather play Banjo-Kazooie. Different from this game where I like it more than Castlevania 3. It may just be that overall Banjo-Kazooie is a better game than Castlevania 3, so it's more difficult for a new game to beat it. About the code, I think I fucked up. The 2 codes I have can be seen on the same page so I expected to have used the first one for myself, but appearently I used the second one and the first was the one I should have posted here, lol. Since you basically claimed it (which I expected it to be you anyway) I'll send you the correct one via PM. You should be able to claim it from PS Store website anyway. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Honor_Hand Posted July 19, 2018 Share Posted July 19, 2018 lol Oh, It's a shame to hear something wasn't quite right on Yooka-Laylee for you. You aren't definitely the first one I hear with a similar comment. Lots of people think that the game is between OK and good but that there is some sort of magic missing from it. Hopefully, it can redeem for you when you come back to it. Many thanks for the code 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndresLionheart Posted August 24, 2018 Author Share Posted August 24, 2018 (edited) Octopath Traveler Game Difficulty: 4 Completion Difficulty: 8 Time to Complete: 75 hours Thoughts on the game From the second it was shown I was extremelly interested in this due to how it looked. The unique artstyle utilizing character sprites in a style of the SNES era along with 3D environments with textures in the same graphic style made it stand out immediately. I started with Primrose, the Dancer, and by the time I gathered all the other 7 characters I ended up with Alfyn (Apothecary), Olberic (Warrior) and Therion (Thief). My reasoning was having at least one of each type of Path Action (special field abilities used mostly to complete sidequests) and because those were the ones I liked more. To make a game of 8 protagonists a lot of sacrifices have to be made. They all have their own stories in which the others don't really matter. This can make some scenes make no sense because the other characters don't show up and they even sometimes talk about being alone in that situation. Every story is also very down to earth, focusing on one aspect of the character that gets developed along the 4 chapters that each story constitutes. This makes them feel more like what would usually be an important side story in a game like Tales of Berseria, in which every character had an important sidequest that spanned the whole game. The conclusions are satisfying, but I can't feel like there was not even close at a game's worth of plot to each of them. Again, this is a side effect of having 8 main characters, combining all 8 would give quite the length. Apart from this there are 100 sidequests of varying importance. Some fledge out side characters, some send you out to optional dungeons to fight optional bosses, and some just ask you to get something from someone in the same town. The combat is really fun. Optimizing my main 4 characters made me feel powerful as fuck. An important factor to developing each character are secondary jobs. After unlocking each one anyone can get the skills and pasives of another job, and while the skills are only usable when the secondary job is equipped, the pasives are kept after switching, allowing to mix and match different passives from different jobs to specialize each character even further. You can only equip 4 passives at a time, so it's not just stacking everything, in-depth choices have to been made for the most optimal builds, and that is the stuff that I love spending time on in my RPGs. By the end my Olberic was a 6 weapon-wielding monstrosity that could deal massive physical damage, and my Primrose was a beast of a sorcerer that could use every element and was able to deal stupid amounts of damage with the help of a special buff that Alfyn had that could make each of her spells be cast twice per turn. After finishing one character story, the rest are way easier because you begin to have access to end game equipment. Also, there are 4 special secondary classes that are unlocked after beating some optional bosses. This classes are way over the power level of the others. That's how my Olberic could wield every type of melee weapon, and Primrose could cast each type of elemental magic. With those jobs, every other character chapter 4 becomes a joke. Still, is fun to destroy a boss in one turn with gigantic numbers popping on screen. The music is amazing. Especially the battle themes. Every song in important moments and battles set the mood amazingly. Sad and ominous songs accompanny the dark moments, while important boss battles have this battle theme that has a beginning that gets you pumped up for battle immediately. Everything is great as long as you go for finishing each character story and do some side content for the extra jobs and some amazing end-game equipment. But for full completion... Thoughts on the completion There are actually 101 sidequests. One of them unlocks what is considered the final dungeon. In this dungeon you can get some backstory on characters that are not talked much during the story but that are really important for the main character's plots. But, there is one thing that really pissed me off here which I consider kind of a gameplay spoiler, since it's not really story related, so I will write it in this handy spoiler tag: Spoiler After going into the dungeon you can't go out, which also means you can't save until you are done. There are 8 refights with some bosses that are piss easy (I beat most of them in 1 or 2 turns without getting hit once). After each of this refights is when you get to read the backstory I mentioned earlier. This is fine, but then there is a final boss in here, which is waaaay above anything else. Without being able to save you are required to go against this boss. Dying means reloading from the last save point, so that means before entering this dungeon. It would all have been okay for me if it wasn't for one little detail: for this final boss you are required to make 2 teams of 4, which means you have to use all 8 characters! Up to this point I had only been using my main 4, optimizing them to stupid heights and neglecting the other 4 (to finish their chapters I just carried them with 3 of my good characters). I picked my main 4 to start with the hope that I wasn't gonna need to use the other 4 unless one of the others died (I thought this could be the case because the UI to make the 2 teams calls one "Primary Team" and the other "Secondary Team"). The fight starts against this mess of a thing. It had several different strategies that you have to deal with and it changes them as his health is reduced. It took me about 35 minutes to kill it, mostly because it becomes immune to damage until his adds are dealt with, and he summons adds pretty much every turn unless you can break his defense before he does so. After this it explodes and the battle music fades, making me think I'm done, but nope! The camera scrolls up and there was another whole part of the boss to deal with! Every character was in the scene before this second battle started so I was still thinking my main 4 were gonna get to battle, but nope again! Battle starts with the secondary team, a bunch of characters around level 30 (my main group was almost level 70). Since everyone was in the scene I thought that maybe the others could show up after these died, but nope yet again! They died due to being low level, the Game Over screen showed, and I was sent back to the last save... which was over an hour ago before the 8 boss refights... If I wanted to beat it I would have to grind the other characters and create a second strategy, mixing my main 4 and the other 4 for a better chance, but at this point I decided to not do it... The time investment would have been not worth it to get 100k in money, which I was swimming in since like the first chapter 4 I finished, and an accessory that blocks random encounters, which is pointless when I had already done everything else in the game. Oh, and I guess about 5 lines of text from the dude that caused said monster to appear apologizing to you and his son, and a "thank you" from the son for helping out his father. This really left a bad taste in my mouth, because it makes you waste your time when nowhere else in the game you are required to play all 8 characters. This is also another example of something I would have actually put the time in for if there was a Trophy for my account. But without anything to show for it, the extra 10-15 hours of preparation were not gonna be worth the hassle. tl;dr: I had a great time with this game for the past month and I would recommend it to anyone who likes RPGs, especially if they are fond of the 16-bit era JRPGs. Amazing music that I will keep listening to, great characters with touching (and sometimes relatable) stories, and a combat system that rewards planning ahead. The Media Corner There are few examples that I would like to show but uploading with my up speed takes a while... here is an interesting one, for now. It shows the basic idea of my strategy in battle to avoid using items because I'm a cheap asshole =D (and there are extemelly OP and cheap items that allow to zerg very easily). If I stop and do nothing is because I'm looking at the next turn and figuring out exactly how I want to proceed. Thinking if I want to heal, buff, lower the boss break points to set him up for the next turn. Sometimes I play these battles as if I was playing Hearthstone or something =p While this was my one and only attempt at this boss, I did know from a random comment somewhere that this boss has a phase in which it starts applying a lot of status ailments to the whole party, including sleep and stuns that can cause the loss of a lot of your turns and could even cause an instant death if unlucky enough. To prevent this I preemptively casted a buff on the whole party to become immune to every status ailment. The thing is that I actually pushed him from before that phase (which I believe it's at 50% hp) to dead, so I never got to see that part =P. I thought that it was kinda funny, so, here is how it went. Edited August 25, 2018 by AndresLionheart 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Honor_Hand Posted August 24, 2018 Share Posted August 24, 2018 That was a cool reading. Noticed that you have the same complaint as most people who have played this game seem to have in regards to the story. As you mentioned in your post, It may be due as to how the character integration is played out during the game when you play with a particular protagonist. Have to admit that the art style alone is what makes the game stands out the most. You would think that 16-bit looking sprites on a 3-dimensional world could create some sort of aesthetical backslash but the game actually looks pretty cool to the eye. Seems like totally worth checking out Also, sorry to hear about that annoying experience on that endgame dungeon. Stuff similar to that (but less severe) has happened to me on other RPGs and the first thing that comes to mind after seeing a number of untrained characters from your party being wiped out in a single turn is: Man, fuck this! Sometimes it is hard to predict when a game is going to force you to fight in a way you haven't been playing until now and stuff like that, usually ends up ruining ample of amounts of playtime without any advice. What are you planning to tackle now? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndresLionheart Posted August 25, 2018 Author Share Posted August 25, 2018 17 hours ago, Honor_Hand said: Also, sorry to hear about that annoying experience on that endgame dungeon. Stuff similar to that (but less severe) has happened to me on other RPGs and the first thing that comes to mind after seeing a number of untrained characters from your party being wiped out in a single turn is: Man, fuck this! Sometimes it is hard to predict when a game is going to force you to fight in a way you haven't been playing until now and stuff like that, usually ends up ruining ample of amounts of playtime without any advice. What are you planning to tackle now? In Final Fantasy VIII you have to split in 2 teams during the final dungeon, but there is a passive to avoid all random encounters. For the final boss the game gives you a random team but after one character dies, if not revived fast enough, the boss does some time magic shit that removes the character from battle altogether. When that happens, another one comes in and replaces him/her. That's what I was hoping was gonna happen here, lol. At least this is not really a final boss, it's just an optional super boss, like Ruby Weapon in Final Fantasy VII. I also added one video for example on how I play. I'll see if I can add some more stuff. I would show this asshole of a boss but the battle is 40 minutes long, lol. On what to play next: I wanted something quick that I can complete before Dragon Quest XI comes out. Not too long ago the Megaman X Legacy collection came out so I found this a perfect oportunity to fill in a void in my classic gaming experience. I haven't played many Megaman games and I need to fix that, and what a better way than with a Platinum as an incentive =D! I have only played Megaman 3 and 8, and from the X series I played 4 and 6 (which I've heard is one of the worst ever, lol). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Honor_Hand Posted August 25, 2018 Share Posted August 25, 2018 5 hours ago, AndresLionheart said: In Final Fantasy VIII you have to split in 2 teams during the final dungeon, but there is a passive to avoid all random encounters. For the final boss the game gives you a random team but after one character dies, if not revived fast enough, the boss does some time magic shit that removes the character from battle altogether. When that happens, another one comes in and replaces him/her. That's what I was hoping was gonna happen here, lol. At least this is not really a final boss, it's just an optional super boss, like Ruby Weapon in Final Fantasy VII. I also added one video for example on how I play. I'll see if I can add some more stuff. I would show this asshole of a boss but the battle is 40 minutes long, lol. On what to play next: I wanted something quick that I can complete before Dragon Quest XI comes out. Not too long ago the Megaman X Legacy collection came out so I found this a perfect oportunity to fill in a void in my classic gaming experience. I haven't played many Megaman games and I need to fix that, and what a better way than with a Platinum as an incentive =D! I have only played Megaman 3 and 8, and from the X series I played 4 and 6 (which I've heard is one of the worst ever, lol). Lol Good thing it is just an optional boss and not the final one... I saw the video, it seems like you have a pretty sound strategy in avoiding to use items altogether. Ah, the Megaman X Collection looks pretty cool. My personal experience with Megaman comes from playing 1, 2, 3 and X. Great action-platformers. X, in particular, was pretty great so I imagine that a collection including all the games from that particular series must be awesome. The music in those games was awesome for the era. Some of the tunes there are highly hummable. Yeah, some of the latest games in both series actually have somewhat of a bad reputation. Haven't tried them out myself so I wouldn't know. Good luck in taking the challenge. I remember some of those old games being particularly hard so I assume the Platinum must be particularly hard 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndresLionheart Posted September 1, 2018 Author Share Posted September 1, 2018 (edited) Mega Man X Legacy Collection 1Game Difficulty: 6 (In Rookie Hunter Mode: -10. Yes, Negative Ten)Platinum Difficulty: 3Time to Platinum: 25 hours Thoughts on the game From the first 4 X games I did play X4 as Zero once a few years ago in a Gamecube collection, and even though I have seen a bit of the first game from some videos, I was pretty much blind. Not to mention that I barely remember anything from X4, only how the last boss looked and that Magma Dragoon did Hadoukens and Shoryukens. Since this is a collection we have to talk about each game individually and what the collection has for extras. I obviously had no biases due to nostalgia, so I will say in advance that my best to worst goes: X4 > X > X3 >>>>> X2. With that out of the way, let's start with this in order of release: X: The classic one that most people know and remember fondly. I expected a good run and gun game and that's what I got. The difficulty is fair and I had a good time with all the stages, except for the beginning of Sigma Stage 1... There is a set of small moving platforms without any ground below and flying enemies being annoying. It wouldn't be so bad wasn't it for the fact that since there is no other ground around it's difficult to know if a platform is moving or not. You standing in a moving platform, and they stopping for 2 seconds when they are about to move back makes it really tricky to gauge how far to jump. This one has the best music, though. Favorite goes to Storm Eagle Stage... such a rocking tune! Then Spark Mandrill Stage (Ready to be played right below along the video). X2: Ugh, I can't put my finger on exactly what I felt with this one, but it had something that I just didn't click with me. What I can say is that I pretty much forgot everything about it right after playing it. Stages, music, I barely remember the bosses. Trying to remember I can say there was an Alligator, some fish that protected itself with a bubble that was weak to Alligator's weapon and... that's about it. It may be that I played this one on a saturday night while drinking some beers, so that may have affected my ability to recall some stuff, but still, for that too happen the game has to be very forgettable. I finished it all in that one sitting, and I can remember being frustrated at some platform that has to be maneuvered around floors by jumping on it to change its direction. That platform was also required to find the Shoryuken technique, which is a pain in the ass because on the way there are instant death spikes all over the place, and you have to also be at full health when reaching the place for the ability capsule to appear. The first time I got there I was missing like 2 pegs of health so I had to do the platform thing all over again! All the collectables are hidden in very cryptic places, making it almost impossible to find without a guide. The game overall is the most difficult of the 4, but for whatever reason it has the easiest final boss. It deals very little damage and the 2nd form is a joke. X3: This one is fine, it's like the middle road. It's serviceable. It does the Mega Man X thing okay enough to be fun to play. It can feel a tad bit hard in the beginning, but after one boss it stabilizes. This one had a really nice feature. It it an upgrade for the helmet that shows all the collectables of a stage when starting it, and also shows what has already been collected in the stage select screen. The one thing of note on this one is the final form of the final boss. It's a pain in the ass. It's big and moves slowly, but leaves little room to move around and has some attacks that are either very hard to avoid or deal absurds amounts of damage, or BOTH! There is this missile attack he does when you are behind him that shoots 4 missiles, either 1 by 1 or all 4 at the same time, and those deal about 1/4 of a fully upgraded health bar with the defensive upgrade that halves damage. If that wasn't enough, his hitbox is miniscule! It can only be hit on its tiny head and only with charged X-Busters. It took me a while to find out where to hit it because if you aim straight at its head the shot gets deflected by his chest or shoulder, so where you actually want to aim is to about his forehead or right at his ugly bald top of the head. Definitely the boss that took me the longest to get right. X4: We get into the PS1 territory, so the graphics get a very nice upgrade. On top of this, Zero is finally fully playable, with his own set of abilities and cutscenes. This means that the game is basically double the length of the older ones. Every stage feels different, as if each one tries to test you in a completely different aspect. They are also divided in sections, so if all lives are lost you can continue from the latest section, instead of having to do the whoooole thing again. X's Buster got buffed as fuck. Its charged shot got a huge boost in damage and charge speed, making it a bit too good. If that wasn't enough, there are 2 arm upgrades that improve it. The better one allows for an even stronger charged shot that leaves some kind of black hole energy kinda thing on the impact zone which keeps dealing damage. With that X becomes a complete beast, and for me that I like going around with my buster charged all the time, I got to rip apart everything. I think the developers knew it was that good because the helm upgrade gives infinite weapon energy when using regular shots with bosses' weapons to try to make them more attractive, and even then I kept using the X-Buster because it was more powerful. Just from the first playthough I could recall where all the secrets were and who were all the bosses, something that I have a harder time with the other games. The collectables are in places that any normal person could find, so that probably helped with being able to remember the locations. On Zero's side, the game is a bit harder because of having a shorter range and most bosses not getting stunned by their weaknesses. It also doens't help that he doesn't get an armor upgrade, so he cannot reduce damage taken. I still liked playing as him more because it feels more badass to go around killing robots with a green light sword (purple after beating a certain boss). Having abilities that can be accessed at all times with button commands instead of changeable weapons is also a plus. All have their own uses, making the boss weapons much more appealing than with X. The final boss can be intimidating on a first try because it has 3 forms and there are only 2 sub tanks in X4, but with 3 deaths I figured it out and then it became easy enough. This one also has anime cutscenes, infamous for their bad voice acting. I actually found it amusing. Zero's "What am I fighting foooooor!?" has to be the better known one, but Iris earns the prize for the worst voice acting I ever heard. Yes, even worse than early Resident Evil. I'll also mention that the ending is simple but it makes a point about X and Zero's friendship that made me feel more interested in their struggles and what could happen on the next game (aside from the massive drop in quality, I guess). Collection: There are a bunch of illustrations to look, music to listen and extras including old ads for the game and an anime short detailing some story. The emulation (or whatever the games run on) can fuck up when playing the SNES games. If you go to the PS Home too much or pause the games using the collection menu (accessed with the touch pad) eventually a lot of screen tearing starts to happen. The only solution I found was quitting the whole thing altogether and starting it back again. There are also boss challenges that pit X against 2 bosses at the same time. It's done in the SNES type of graphics so a lot of bosses had to be kinda demastered from the newer games. It goes without saying that it is a complete clusterfuck of attacks. I basically just put it on easy and breezed through it. I can see the appeal in the leaderboards, but I'm not interested. The last thing to address is Rookie Hunter mode... hoo boy... Basically, it makes the game easier, but it goes waaaaay overboard with making it easier. Normal enemies deal so little damage that the game can't even show how little they did! After getting hit like 10 times I finally saw 1 peg being substracted from the health bar... Spikes that are usually instant death only deal damage. Bosses barely do any damage as well, about 1 peg every 3 hits or so. I understand these games are not the easiest thing in the world and that the mode is meant for players that are not that good to be able to beat it, but at some point it becomes insulting even for them. Not to mention that I think part of the appeal and longevity of these games is getting better after failing a few times. Being able to just walk forward and win doesn't feel right. Thoughts on the Platinum Well, while we are in the "Rookie Hunter" rant I'll say that almost every trophy can be obtained in that mode. The only requirement in normal mode is beating each game once. You can play the whole thing on easy and then switch to normal for the final boss stage, and for X, X2 and X3 there are passwords to go straight to the end, so technically a lot of collecting stuff and overall playing can be avoided for the first 3. X4 was a PS1 game, so it saves in a file instead of using passwords, so no cheating for this one! The only trophy that could be prove difficult is beating X3 in normal mode. The same would apply to X4, but you can punch in a cheat in that one that gives X an Ultimate Armor that allows him to use a super powerful attack that can normally only be done once an infinite amount of times. Obviously, I played every game in normal and as it was meant to, collected all the upgrades and finished them. After that I would use passwords to do the miscellaneous stuff that was missable. X4 only has on trophy that I'm not completely sure if it's missable, which is shooting a full charged shot with every weapon, including the 2 types of X-Buster upgrades. You can switch between the arm upgrades when you get to the place that has the ability capsules, but I'm not sure if those still show up after finishing the stage. I'll guess they do, but I can't say for sure. The only trophy that slightly annoyed me was beating Bit and Byte in X3 with only the Mega Buster, not because of the difficulty, they are easy, but because they can appear randomly in any stage. So, when I had to go back to that I had to beat stages in a new playthrough until they decided to appear. The Media Corner On top of the usual platinum pop video, for which I left finishing X4 as Zero for the last trophy, I also compiled my first kill of each Final Boss. More info below the video. Popping the Platinum X: 2nd attempt. On the first one I didn't want to waste sub tanks and I died to the second form. The doge also hit me right away so I couldn't cheese it with Hadoukens. On the second attempt I was doing the final form for the first time, so I kinda get destroyed until I find my flow. X2: 1st attempt. This boss is a joke. On a second attempt I could have probably had done it without a single sub tank. Both forms don't do much damage, but at least the music is cool. X3: I lost count, but I guess that was the 5th attempt. In my first one I wasted all my sub tanks like a dumb dumb, so for the next few I was doomed from the start. After losing all my lives I filled the sub tanks and tested one more time before going at it for real. You can see that I was still trying to figure out where the fuck to hit it. I knew I had to hit it on the head with charged X-Busters, but I just couldn't aim correctly until I found where to actually aim. X4 as X: 4th attempt. Again, I wasted my sub tanks (only 2 in this game) in my first attempt like a double dumb dumb, so the next few lives were lost early into the final form because I was still finding a groove for the 2nd form. It wasn't until I played as Zero that I figured out to force him into throwing the scythe on the wall to avoid him from using that very annoying attack with electricty on the ground and boomerang things going all over the place. On the kill I was just figuring out how to avoid some of the 3rd form attacks (both the fire and electric attacks). X4 as Zero: 3rd attempt. The 2nd form was a mess until I figured out what I mentioned before with X. Until that I was actually dying to that form, lol. The Gunner part of the 3rd form is weak to Ryuenjin (the fire sword I use against the 1st form), I tried it the first time I got to that but it was getting me hit, so I just decided to use Kuenbu (the spinning jumping attack) instead. This one was very slow because I was being very cautious. For the deformed part of the 3rd form I stand where I stand because it is the safest thing to do until I know which of his 2 attacks he is gonna use. Storm Eagle Stage Music! Holy shit, that 16-fucking Bit guitar! ...and Spark Mandrill Stage Music! Oh my feels for old games music. Edited September 1, 2018 by AndresLionheart 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Honor_Hand Posted September 5, 2018 Share Posted September 5, 2018 Congrats on completing this collection of classic games and the Platinum ? I somehow thought that the Platinum difficulty was gonna be on the high side considering they are old games but, yeah, by reading what you went through, it doesn't sound hard at all. Even less if you go with the Rookie Hunter difficulty from the get-go ;-; I can understand trying to adjust the difficulty of a game by scaling it a little down if you are having problems with a certain section or if the game is flat out cheap but it sounds like Rookie Hunter went WAY overboard with that. Really 10 hits of 1 regular enemy so they could nick 1 portion of your health bar? Pfffffttt, that's ridiculous and removes any sort of challenge from the game. They may as well call it God Mode and turn you invincible for the whole game :-/ Unlike most people, I originally played the PC version of Megaman X instead of the SNES version back in the day and let me tell you, it was an awesome game. I actually don't remember ever beating the game back then though but I do know that I enjoyed my time with it. About the rest of the games on the X series, I have no idea. The only other Megaman games I played were 1, 2 and 3 on the NES, which were pretty cool as well. It was cool reading your thoughts on the games. Definitely gives me an idea about them if I ever get to play them at some point I thought this collection included all the X games from 1 to 8 So... I guess Capcom decided to separate the whole collection on 2 releases? >.> And Yes... That 16-bit guitar on Storm Eagle's stage was awesome. The whole series, even the very first NES games have always had exceptionally good soundtracks 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndresLionheart Posted September 6, 2018 Author Share Posted September 6, 2018 @Honor_Hand It does include all 8 games, but it comes in 2 discs with 2 different platinums. My guess is that since these are sold separately in Japan they didn't want to compile a third build of the game with a menu giving access to each set of games, so they just put it in 2 discs instead. Seems like printing an extra disc is cheaper than developing a menu. Of course, the other collection is much less appealing. I will platinum it at some point, but I'm not looking forward to playing X7 and 8. I will have to go in with the mindset of those being terrible games and expect to just laugh at how bad they are. And if worst comes to worst and the level design is so trash that it's filled with cheap stuff, I can always use Rookie Hunter mode and blast through it, lol. I also want to play the NES ones. I had the first collection since it released and the other day I bought the second collection to have for whenever I feel like playing it. These may not have platinums, but the first collection has a bunch of easy Ultra Rares, lol. Wasn't the PC version of X kind of trash, though? I remember there was a PC version of one of the games that was really bad, but I think it was the first NES game. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Honor_Hand Posted September 6, 2018 Share Posted September 6, 2018 6 hours ago, AndresLionheart said: @Honor_Hand It does include all 8 games, but it comes in 2 discs with 2 different platinums. My guess is that since these are sold separately in Japan they didn't want to compile a third build of the game with a menu giving access to each set of games, so they just put it in 2 discs instead. Seems like printing an extra disc is cheaper than developing a menu. Of course, the other collection is much less appealing. I will platinum it at some point, but I'm not looking forward to playing X7 and 8. I will have to go in with the mindset of those being terrible games and expect to just laugh at how bad they are. And if worst comes to worst and the level design is so trash that it's filled with cheap stuff, I can always use Rookie Hunter mode and blast through it, lol. I also want to play the NES ones. I had the first collection since it released and the other day I bought the second collection to have for whenever I feel like playing it. These may not have platinums, but the first collection has a bunch of easy Ultra Rares, lol. Wasn't the PC version of X kind of trash, though? I remember there was a PC version of one of the games that was really bad, but I think it was the first NES game. It definitely sounds like printing the second disc was the cheaper route o.o Anyways, it's cool that the collection actually comes with the 8 games in the series. That means a lot of content to play even if the games are rather short. Yeah, I have also heard the rest of the X series on PS1 and PS2 was less than stellar, to put it nicely. Will be looking forward to reading your thoughts once you eventually get on the right mindset to play them. lol At least, the Rookie Hunter mode will be useful for something. To be honest, I have no idea how trashy the PC version probably was. I played it years ago when I was a small, innocent child unaware of frame rate drops and bad ports. Didn't see anything wrong with the game and most probably thought all the explody things were great lol For real now, I'd probably need to play both the SNES and PC version side by side to spot any differences but I don't remember anything wrong with the one I played. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndresLionheart Posted September 8, 2018 Author Share Posted September 8, 2018 (edited) Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker Game Difficulty: 2Completion Difficulty: 5Time to Complete: 10 hours Thoughts on the game I have had this one in the backlog since it came out for Wii U. I bought it on release but for whatever reason I didn't play it back then. Then, I postponed it time and time again, eventually never playing it. When it came out for Switch I finally got into playing it for real. It was indeed a cute little puzzle game. There are a lot of different mechanics to keep every puzzle fresh from the other, even when the main mechanic is just walking and moving the camera around. From simple stuff hidden from plain sight, to switches, invisible floors, rotating stages, platform that move by touch, chain reactions, action puzzles, multiple toads, minecart riding, running fast, "stealth", and more, every stage brings something new or iterates or the easier version. It was a nice experience to lay back and enjoy. The graphics are colorful and round, everything looks so cute, and Toad with its silly screams only adds to that. Still, it certainly is on the short side. The difficulty only comes in a bit when trying to complete each stage to 100% (collecting 3 gems and doing a special objective) and it is not that much more diffcult for that. It mostly challenges solving simple puzzles with the few tools at hand. There are 2 bosses that are repeated like 3 times each with increasing levels of difficulty, so having a few more would have helped there a lot. I didn't mind it, but it seems that they could have done so much more. In a game like this, creativity is what fuels it, and seeing the same enemy so many times hurts it a bit. Not to mention that you only really ever hit one of those 2 bosses, since the other one is basically just an obstacle course in which when you are done he is beaten in a single hit. In the end, I'm not sure how I feel about this game. In one hand I really liked solving it's puzzles and I would have liked more levels, but on the other hand the short length doesn't allow me to recommend this game for full price. It seems that a lot of these Nintendo games have a lot of creativity in them, but such creativity becomes a victim of the current market standards. That's why most of the time creative endeavors come from indies, a side of gaming that usually is on the much cheaper side. Thoughts on the completion As I mentioned before, each stage has 3 gems and a special objective, only a few gems are required to progress through the game and a lot are required for the post-game content. There are some Super Mario Odyssey stages (these were Super Mario 3D World stages on Wii U), some earlier stage remixes with the objective of gathering 3 other toads that can't get hit or you die, and more stage remixes in which now you are constantly being chased by a mummy clone of yourself that mimics your moves. After those, the final challenge is unlocked, a 50 floor endurance maze with the mummy clone pressuring you. After 10 floors it becomes 2 mummies, after 20 floors they become 3, and finally, after 35 floors they become 4. On top of that, after every one of those breaks, the amount of other enemies increases and it becomes a complete mess. After floor 35 going the wrong way more than usually ends up in getting hit. Get hit twice and it's back to start. There are a few mushrooms to recover this hit, but I haven't seen them after floor 35. It is not that difficult, but a whole run can take 15-20 minutes, so dying close to the end can feel like a pain. The 5 in the completion difficulty comes from this one and only level, if it wasn't for it I would have put the completion difficulty at 2 or 3. The Media Corner My one, and only, needed attempt at this final stage and boss =P Next, I will be taking a week off from work to peacefully play Dragon Quest XI without any distractions. Full on days and nights of JRPG goodness for a full week, something I love doing =D! Starting on September 15th. Edited September 8, 2018 by AndresLionheart 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndresLionheart Posted September 16, 2018 Author Share Posted September 16, 2018 (edited) Marvel's Spider-Man Game Difficulty: 3 Platinum Difficulty: 3 Time to Platinum: 27 hours Thoughts on the game I don't really follow any superhero but I like Marvel's ones (can't say the same for DC). If I had to rank them I would put Iron Man first and then Spider-Man, but when talking about games, I think Spider-Man has the most potential of the two. Flying around is fine, but swinging around is much more interesting. And it all comes from the swinging. I wasn't gonna get this game for now, but I watched someone play for 50 minutes, and just from the opening moments when it goes from the first cutscene into the swinging I felt like I wanted to play. As open world standards go today, this game certainly doesn't do anything new, but what it does it does it so well that its shortcomings are forgotten because moving around and fighting guys is so fun. The main aspects of the game are the swinging and the battling. Like I said like a million times already, swinging around the city feels so good that a lot of the times I didn't want to use the fast travel because I wanted to cover all that distance as Spider-Man would. On top of swinging you can also zip to points and jump off from them, do air dashes by pulling youself with a quick zip and other maneuvers that help to move around in any situation. For combat it utilizes the spider sense to telegraph attacks and be able to avoid pretty much anything. Combat maneuvers are simple to pull off and look great in motion. Webbing and throwing enemies around, stickying them to walls, yanking them around, throwing different objects in the area, zipping to enemies with a punch, dodging under them, and much more. There are different types of enemies with each one having some type of attack they are weak to, like shield guys requiring to dodge under them to get around the shield or double whip guys being immune to anything that is or goes into air combat. There is also stealth which is fun but is extremelly weighted toward the player. Enemies have incredibly low fields of vision and the UI tells you when it is safe to stealth attack an enemy without anyone else seeing. There are all kinds of activities around the city, like collecting Peter's old backpacks, taking pictures of places, stopping random crimes, dismantling enemy bases and lots more. On top of that there are some side missions that give other varied tasks to accomplish. Some of these are repeated a bit too much, like the Crimes, but most of them have their own twists to make it a little different than the rest. Graphics are great. Even on my base PS4 it runs perfectly. The draw distance shows the whole map and everything looked clean both while static and in motion. Character models and voice acting are also great. While watching cutscenes I felt like I was watching small portions of a movie due to the good animations, lip synching and voice acting. Overall I'm pleased with the game. It reminded me of how much fun I had moving around and collecting stuff in the Prototype games. I still don't know about the DLC, though. If it has trophies I will probably play it, if it doesn't I will think about it. Thoughts on the Platinum It doesn't ask to complete everything, just enough. What would be the most difficult task is not required as long as you don't waste too many Challenge Tokens in stuff that isn't the Suits. I'm talking about the Taskmaster Challenges that can be completed with 3 different ranks, with the best rank actually requiring playing well to achieve. The trophies only ask for a silver rank once in each type of challenge, so it's actually no problem. While playing the game I was completing anything that was on my way so I wouldn't have so much to complete after beating the story. When I was done I only had left a few things on each district but a bunch of random Crimes that I was still missing. These happen randomly while moving through the district, so all you can do is swing around until the police calls. This meant about 1 or 2 more hours just going around finding those after completing all the other side activities, so not THAT much of a problem. Still, I thank Insomniac Games for not turning the Benchmarks into trophies. These track a lot of different stats like distance swinged and times punching a dude. The last objective of each category is so high that it could have added like 20 hours of mindlessly doing the same thing over and over again for no reason. This could be a great first Platinum for those who normally don't care about that stuff. So if you have a friend that is playing this, challenge him to get the Platinum =p. The Media Corner This game doens't lend itself too well to leaving something interesting for the last Trophy, so here is some uneventful fight with some dudes along with some swinging and a final look at the city from a high point. Popping the Platinum Edited September 18, 2018 by AndresLionheart 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Honor_Hand Posted September 17, 2018 Share Posted September 17, 2018 Hello Andres! How are you doing? That Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker game looks pretty cool for a puzzle-platformer. I heard about that game coming out on the Wii U (and later on the Switch) some time ago but this was the first time I actually read an opinion and watch a video on it. It looks simple but serviceable enough. Looks like the kind of game I'd enjoy. Is a shame though, that the difficulty leans more towards the easy side of things. I love when games provide a reasonable challenge within themselves, specially puzzle games, but it seems Captain Toad continues a certain trend on some Nintendo franchises of being ridiculously easy for the most part. Don't get me wrong, I love their games and I'm aware that they do make some challenging titles or include some sort of extra challenge on their games but, some of their later games I played on the Wii gave me that vibe. That they were leaning more towards pleasing the casual gamers instead of those who are looking for a good challenge. Then again... That was on the Wii. A lot of time has passed since then, I don't know if things are still like this as I haven't played most of their newer games. God, I feel old all of the sudden ;-; As for Spiderman on the PS4, I'll be damned but that video looked spectacular even if it was just you beating some random thugs before the Platinum popped. The swinging mechanic looks phenomenal and the city itself with that draw distance looked spectacular. I have been hearing many praises from this Spiderman title as of recently and, admittedly, I was being kind of skeptical at first but that short video made me reconsider my opinion. It actually looks pretty cool and by your description on it, it seems like an experience worth checking out. Can't remember which was the last Spiderman game I played... Pretty sure it was some blocky mess on the PS1 but I don't even remember the title soooo, yeah... Don't even have a single Spiderman game on PS3 either. Guess I'll need to play catch up on those too ? It was cool reading about you. Be seeing ya! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndresLionheart Posted September 18, 2018 Author Share Posted September 18, 2018 @Honor_Hand Nintendo usually makes their games for everyone. The main parts of their games are easy to moderate, and then completing everything nets you some harder challenges, like the Darker Side of the Moon in Super Mario Odyssey when you collect 500 Moons (You only need like 100 to finish the story) or the Bonus Chapter in Captain Toad that has remixed levels with some changes to make it more difficult. Breath of the Wild is probably their one game that doesn't try to be for everyone, you can easily die in that one even when just starting. Definitely give Spider-Man a try whenever you get a PS4. As you can see from most of the games in my list, I'm not the kind of person that plays these games and I still enjoyed it a lot, so that speaks for the fun factor of the game. Now back to Dragon Quest XI that I'm also having a great time with =D. This one is gonna take a while to Platinum, though, as it's normal with long ass JRPGs. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndresLionheart Posted September 29, 2018 Author Share Posted September 29, 2018 (edited) Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age Game Difficulty: 5 Platinum Difficulty: 3 Time to Platinum: 105 hours Thoughts on the game What an adventure this was... My first Dragon Quest was VIII (which goes with my weird trend of starting long standing series with the 8th installment). I played the whole thing but for some reason I stopped when all I had left was the final boss. After that I played IX on DS for a few hours, so my knowledge of the series is fairly small. Since the first time I saw the japanese version of XI with its vibrant colors and nice graphics I knew I wanted to play it. It was a while until it finally came out in english. Knowing it was a pretty big game I decided to take a week off work to just play and immerse myself in the world without any distractions, and good thing I did, because this game is so big that it would have taken me about 2 months to complete otherwise. From the moment I started I was hooked. Not because of the story, but because the world was so pretty and nice to explore that I always wanted to see what new place I was gonna find next. It triggered in me a feeling of adventure through a world that I haven't felt with the RPGs I've been playing lately. It is not exactly about the world being believable, but every new place you visit has its own story to tell and problems to deal with, as if the world is happening with or without you and not just because you are the hero of the world and everything is you and only you. There is a story of saving the world, but it becomes secondary when something you need can only be gotten from helping the people you meet. This also leads in a way to gate the world that I forgot was how classic games used to work, the acquisition of key items. Be it a pass that a king gives you to go through the border or a key that you got from something else entirely that looked like it was only for some extra items but ended up being what opens a door to a city required to keep the story going. I've read some reviews knocking down points for it being too "classic", and while agree the battle system could use a few tweaks (like showing the turn order to at least plan ahead accordingly), I also think that being classic is one of its strongest points. With every RPG franchise going for complete overhauls like Final Fantasy, or bringing something different to turns, like Octopath Traveler, Dragon Quest is probably the only RPG that we still have that echoes the beginnings of turn based combat. So, by being so "classic" it is now unique because everyone else is trying to reinvent the wheel. What was kinda meh is the music. It is more of a silly game with funny characters so songs are more goofy sounding, but even for serious bosses the music wasn't interesting. There was only one track that kinda made me feel something and that is the one that is usually used for flying around (something that is barely done because you cannot land in most places). Throughout the journey the game always made me laugh when I ended up in places that have people with other language accents who also throw in some words in their languages when they talk. There is Gondolia, which has people saying stuff in Italian, and Puerto Valor, with its people saying stuff in spanish with a mexican accent, lol. There is also this place with french people but holy shit I have a hard time understanding those. From the player party I liked most characters, except Veronica (the mage) early in the game because she is the usual smartass asshole that treats you like you are stupid. Later she stops being like that, but I just ended up never caring for her. Then we have Sylvando, who I didn't use in my party but I like his story and how he ended up being an entertainer. Also, his flamboyant way to talk with latin accent always made his dialog funny (example down in the media corner). And last character I want to comment on is Jade, this game's waifu. I don't know what it is with her, but I haven't been this captivated by a waifu in forever, and she kinda doens't make any sense. She is introduced as a badass martial artist, but then she has a bunch of alluring skills. I think the reason would be that deep inside she likes being seductive, but except for a moment in the story when she gets controlled by weird demon dude and becomes a sexy gothic seductress, she doesn't show any other indication of this. After freeing her of that mind control she keeps the ability to become this gothic version of herself, which is what makes me think she actually likes being a seductress deep inside. Anyway, it may be her eyes, it may be the way she stands, or the way she talks, but something in her got me. So, here, I'll leave this example of her using the "Sexy Beam" (in a spoiler tag so you can hide it after and not get distracted from the text ? ): Spoiler There are tons of materials and the crafting is done with a mini-game. Anyone would think it would become annoying to do the same mini-game every time you want to craft something, but it is not. What happens is that you are presented with a basic image of what you want to craft and you have to strike it in different parts to fill a bar up to a point. You can't go over this mark and there is a specific point where it is considered a perfect. You only have a limited amount of focus so you cannot keep hammering indefinitely, that's why being efficient is very important. As you level up your crafting skill improves, and recipes that were tough to craft become easier because your hammer strikes become more efficient, you get more crits (which deals double the progress but always stops at the perfect point if it would go over) and you get better specialized strikes to be even more efficient. If you are good at the mini-game the crafted piece can become better and go up to +3, so it's important to always aim for perfection. In the beginning it is hard to get perfects for good gear, but in the end when you get to about level 70 you become a beast at forging. With a special skill that guarantees a crit along with the Kaquadrasmash which hits 4 squares for double power I was landing perfects after perfects. It did feel pretty good =P There is a very important part that I can't talk about without spoiling the whole plot, so look inside the spoiler tag at your own risk: Spoiler At some point in the story everything goes to shit. The bad guy shows up and takes the sword of the ancient hero and all your crew almost dies, but one of your characters saves the rest and she dies for it. This sets in motion a big twist to come later. After beating the final boss (about 60 hours into the game) you can save and then load that file to start the post-game. It all starts like the nicest post-game with everyone happy about the end of the Lord of Shadows, Mordegon, but then your party finds out about a tower that could allow them to travel back in time. They think about going back to the day Mordegon got the sword and stop him from that, saving your friend's life and everyone else in the world that was affected by all the shit that happened after that day. Problem is, only you can travel back, your friends all stay in this new future, and on top of this you are told it is not safe to do because you could end up in the void of time never finding a way out. I actually didn't want to do this, it made me feel terrible to abandon who I felt were the real party members that were with me to go to the ones in another timeline, all for a character that I didn't care about who's death made another party member the best magic user ever. None of your party members want you to do it but you end up doing it anyway because well... you gotta keep going with the game, I guess. The rest of that night I kept playing but I felt horrible for having to choose that. Yes, I'm silly for investing myself so much into a fricking game, but we can all agree that it is a great point in favor of the game for being able to immerse me this much into it and make me care as much. Anyway, after that the game kept going for another 40 hours. You don't need to do everything, though, most of the stuff after these events is optional and are meant for becoming more powerful to be able to beat the true final boss, which would be almost impossible without getting better gear and leveling up a bit more at least. Thoughs on the Platinum I stand up and I applaud Square-Enix... This has to be the best implementation of completion in a big RPG ever. There are no missables, but not exactly because you have access to everything all the time. The thing is that they took into considerations all the unique items and monsters that change along the game and always kept a way of getting those things regardless of the story progress. For example: There is a dungeon with a lot of unique items that disappears after beating its boss: all the missed unique items appear in different areas accessible by flying. There are monsters in the world that change into more powerful versions: the older versions can still be found in earlier dungeons. There are a few costumes obtained from non-shop NPCs that change depending on the progress in the game: the older item is moved to the normal shop. This quest disappeared because I advanced too much through the game: it becomes available again in the post-game. And so on, every situation is taken into account and I cannot praise them enough for this. I loved the game but having to play it again right away just for not following a guide and enjoying the game shouldn't be a thing that happens anymore. Thanks to this, doing the platinum is not hard or annoying at all, it only requires a bit of dedication. It tours you across the world, incentivizing the exploration of a lot of side content that would normally be ignored by most people. On top of this, it doesn't ask for 100% of everything, only a few things. For most things it asks for 50-60%, and that is why it is not annoying. In terms of bosses there is nothing too difficult, since you can always grind up fairly easily, and levels in this game give a lot of stats, making them very important. The only thing that could feel a little annoying is the casino stuff because, well, it's a casino, so it is random in the end, but the slot machine odds are good for the player and it super easy to save scum =P There is one trophy that I wanted to rant for a bit, but since it is a hidden one I'll do it in spoiler tags. It isn't really that important of a moment, so you won't get spoiled from much: Spoiler So, one trophy is about getting married, but you can only marry Gemma, the one girl you won't care about because she is your childhood friend that you as the player know not much about, who is shown at the beginning of the game, and then a little bit in the middle, and then a little bit in the end, so you can't care about her... I was tempted to reset the game after getting the trophy just to not be married, lol. If given the choice who to marry my preference would be: Jade >>>>> Serena > Sylvando > Veronica > Gemma. Yes, I would marry a guy over Veronica and Gemma, lol. All in all, this should be the text book example of how to implement a trophy list for an RPG, so play the game at your own pace, it was made to be enjoyed =) Oh, and in this spreadsheet you can find all the information needed to make any of the post-game activities that much more simple. The Media Corner I have over 400gb of footage that I got from this game. Definitely my longest recorded game so far (and I didn't even record everything, mainly the way through the main story). Between the final boss being defeated and the platinum popping there are another 40 minutes of some gameplay and cutscenes, so I had to cut a lot to show the last few turns of the final boss. One thing to take into account is that I did the final boss in a way harder state without even noticing. He has a shadow aura that I thought would get broken by hitting him with the Sword of Light (since a similar mechanic happened before in the game) but it wasn't the case. After beating him I looked it up and learned that I was supposed to use the Sword of Light as an item in battle to break the aura, even though the item doens't state that it can be used in combat as such, like every other equipment piece that has any usable effect. Anyway, since I was maxed out this made the final battle more fair for the boss, although it took 35 minutes xD. Also, below you can find how to grind. I wanted to add it because it can be useful and it involves Jade doing cute things Popping the Platinum (along with the true final boss, so spoilers, I guess) How to level up fast =) (more info here) Something I didn't expect: Leading a Parade in a fabulous way! Edited October 1, 2018 by AndresLionheart 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J2V89 Posted September 29, 2018 Share Posted September 29, 2018 Nice job on the Dragon Quest XI plat. That's a game I will get and play. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Honor_Hand Posted October 1, 2018 Share Posted October 1, 2018 Congrats on the Platinum Andres. Wish I could say anything more but I have never played any Dragon Quest game in the series. I did like what I saw on the videos though, which was surprising to me. The characters in these games are designed by Akira Toriyama of Dragon Ball fame, arent' they? Admittedly, I'm not the biggest fan out there of Mr. Toriyama's brand of style but, again... I liked what I saw on the videos. Kind of difficult to explain but some of the characters there clicked with me On 29/9/2018 at 7:12 PM, AndresLionheart said: And last character I want to comment on is Jade, this game's waifu. I don't know what it is with her, but I haven't been this captivated by a waifu in forever, and she kinda doens't make any sense. She is introduced as a badass martial artist, but then she has a bunch of alluring skills. I think the reason would be that deep inside she likes being seductive, but except for a moment in the story when she gets controlled by weird demon dude and becomes a sexy gothic seductress, she doesn't show any other indication of this. After freeing her of that mind control she keeps the ability to become this gothic version of herself, which is what makes me think she actually being a seductress deep inside. Anyway, it may be her eyes, it may be the way she stands, or the way she talks, but something in her got me. So, here, I'll leave this example of her using the "Sexy Beam" (in a spoiler tag so you can hide it after and not get distracted from the text ): Reveal hidden contents Also, this ↑ I wanted to read and check more on your waifu but the damn spoilers are not working. It's not your fault though. The forum has this problem every now and then since it has happened to me quite a number of times on other threads. You can edit and save your post again for them to reappear and work for a while but, if you come back later, there is a chance that they are not going to be working again. Anyways... I was able to check on her on the last couple of videos Good pick man ? Annnndd the whole leading a parade as a soldier of smile thing at the end made me burst into laughter ? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now