Together_Comic's Platinum Panel and Backlog Checklist

[Arcesius]

1 hour ago, Together_Comic said:

Obviously we are here on a trophy hunting website and so trophy goals are going to be there too.  Currently I am at 57 platinums.  When I decided I wanted to start getting platinum trophies, after Ico and The Witcher 3 I thought 100 sounded like a lofty goal that would be amazing to see. After finding PSN profiles I found that 100 wasn't even the beginning of the iceberg. lol. 

 

Hahaha I remember 5 years ago, before I created my own PSN account, talking to some friends... They mentioned having 100+ games on Steam, and I was like "Damn, that's a lot of games.. how can one person play SO MANY GAMES!". 

 

And now I have 120+ S-ranked games on my profile.. That's how "trophy hunting" changed my gaming habits. In a good way though! I have meanwhile discovered not only many amazing games I would not have played otherwise, but this hobby also encouraged me to try out genres I wasn't interested in before! 

 

 

1 hour ago, Together_Comic said:

The other major component for me is the completion percentage.  I like to see the blue boxes on the profile hit that magical 100% and watch the number at the top slowly tick up.  The goal for this year is to clean up all of the backlog sitting already on the profile and get the the oft sought after 100%.  If only for awhile until we go do that Kill Your Completion stuff so that I can keep coming back for more. 

 

Man, I would love to see 100% on my profile again... I haven't hit that number since 2019, where I started NecroDancer... And it will take quite a bit of effort to get there. I think it is a fine goal, so good luck with that! 

 

 

1 hour ago, Together_Comic said:

Thank you guys for reading and I wanted to just say thank you to all of you that I have interacted with throughout the year.  Yall never cease to add games to my backlog with your awesome reviews ( @realm722, @DrBloodmoney, @Cassylvania, @Copanele)  make me think about the hobby as a whole ( @Arcesius), or just  provide encouragement.  (@Joe Dubz , @GonzoWARgasm)

 

I appreciate it.  Happy New Year.  Lets run it back again next time!

 

Thanks to you, man  Happy New Year to you too! Keep this checklist up for 2022 as well, always a pleasure following along! 

[kingofbattle8174]

@Together_Comic

 

Hey thanks for the shoutout and the free promotion. It is great to see how the community has come to really enjoy the event. I am glad it helps you keep moving up the charts. I will continue to read this in the coming year. 

[Together_Comic]

UPDATE 28 - OXENFREE

 

The Premise:

Oxenfree presents a unique challenge when it comes to review because to tell you basically anything about the game is to spoil what is otherwise a great experience.  Dancing as carefully as possible around such spoilers, Oxenfree reminds me of one of those straight to video "horror" movies aimed at 13 to 14 year olds during the early 90s.  (Shout out to all yall, who are old as me and can remember such things.) But to call it a cheap horror movie would be a pretty big disservice to the game.  At its core, Oxenfree is a game about relationships, the people in them, and using those relationships for growth and it uses the horror movie set up to explore these things.

 

The Good: 

Once again its hard to talk about what I liked about the game without going into heavy spoilers.  The character work here is fantastic (and basically has to be since that's the whole game).  The music is top notch and does a good job at setting the atmosphere and ultimately giving me the creeps the entire time.  Without going into it, when I figured out what was going on with the...lets call it nonsensical at first advice, (its really hard to come up with something that doesn't spoil but people who have played the game, know what you are talking about.)  The story is also really compelling, though again telling you much is a disservice to the game.  Finally, this game has probably the best dialogue system I've seen in a game.  Though I love a game like Mass Effect, I always would make fun of it when you would choose the "renegade" option and Shepherd would go nuclear instead of doing or saying anything close to what the dialog wheel implied ? here, you can respond at any time by selecting one of three answers. The characters will even react to your silence if you don’t answer them, or if you decide to walk away and ignore them. This, combined with great writing and voice acting, makes Oxenfree one of the best virtual recreations of real humans talking to each other.  Which again is good, because it's literally the whole game. 

 

The Bad

I don't really set much stock by what people like to call "Walking Simulators", but if there were ever a game that felt like one this is it.  That is to say there isn't much game here.  It's more like watching an interactive move or playing one of those old adventure games without the puzzles.  As a result, I can imagine that if for whatever reason you aren't very into the story, then you could find the whole affair pretty boring. During subsequent playthroughs, I definitely felt the drag,  especially in the one where you can't say anything.  In a game that is strongly based around the dialog interactions seemed like a pretty bad trophy in hindsight.

 

The Trophies

Speaking of the trophies...  There not that bad here.  The game does require at minimum 3 playthroughs.  4 if you mess stuff up in your blind playthrough, but the game is only like 3ish hours long so it isn't to bad to have to do it over.  If I had to recommend an order, I'd do the blind playthrough, then the say nothing one then, then the mean one, and cap it off with the nice playthrough.  I felt so bad after the mean one, which I guess is a testament to good writing.  Otherwise there are some collectables. They don't unlock till near the end of the game so you could get them in your blind playthrough with basically no spoilers so that's nice at least. 

 

All in All

The game provides a captivating experience and a does a great job with its premise and characters.  I definitely recommend going through and playing it.  It is absolutely worth playing blind and is a strong start to the year 2022.

[Together_Comic]

UPDATE 28 - Rime 

 

Rime is a 3D puzzle-platformer brought built on an atmospheric set of worlds in which silent (well mostly silent, he does shout at stuff to solve puzzles sometimes) nameless protagonist kid goes on a journey.  The game reminds me a lot of Ico and Abzu.  It tries to build character with atmosphere, scenery, and music to try and capture that subtle magic that makes those games so memorable.  I will say that doing so, Rime doesn't always live up to the comparisons that its design choices invites. 

 

Visually the game is stunning.  Everything is beautiful from the ridges in the first area to the lighthouse, to the underwater majesty in the third area, everything looks really good.  Animal life flitters and swims about.  There are towers and buildings everywhere just begging for some little wanderer boy to jump in and explore them (and man do you need to explore them for some very well hidden collectibles.)   I will say that it does somewhat lack in world building.  The worlds don't really feel like some faraway place or forgotten civilization, more so they feel kind of plastic if you catch my meaning.  Like they were specifically made so that they can have a puzzle-platformer.  The game doesn't really suffer to much from this though and again the game looks great.  

 

The music is also top notch.  The game has no dialog and I think that choice was made basically so that we can all really enjoy the orchestrated sound track playing through rime.  It really carries a lot of the burden of keeping the game from being too dry in the second-to-second gameplay.   

 

Speaking of second-to-second gameplay,  I really feel like this is where Rime struggles as a game.  It's almost like they devs sometimes forgot that the game had to be played sometimes.  With many sections of traversing up a wall, with basically no danger, or just having to run across vast stretches of land to reach the next location.  Many of the puzzles also lack in creativity.  Most of them are extremely obvious, and the others are also obvious to anyone who has played a puzzle platformer before.  They have all of the obvious find the key, push the blocks, use the orb puzzles that have been in every game of the genre since its inception.  Occasionally they do have some really cool ones that break the mold.  For example there's a sequence where you have to escort a sentinel (the guy in the platinum panel art) (or maybe he's escorting you) through a series of neat puzzle rooms that all loop in on each other and can each progress a little at a time that turns out to be inspired.  They also have some neat stuff playing with shadows, but even both of these are pretty easy and aren't going to stump you for more than a few minutes at most. 

 

The controls also suck.  Often when you're climbing stuff, the boy will just stand there since you aren't holding exactly up on the control stick, or he'll move the opposite direction than you are holding on the control stick, or the opposite direction that he was just moving.  It gets old pretty quick and lacks any sort of fluidity that you see in best in class of the genre.  Again almost like the gameplay was more of an afterthought.

 

That said....

 

 

SPOILER TERRITORY

 

I will now regale you with my head cannon for how Rime came to be developed.  

 

Somewhere in Tequila Works Studios.......

 

 

 

 

 

And thus was poor TC's heart broken 3 times that day.   To be honest, I wasn't expecting the emotions that I felt from this game.  But I don't think that the emotions were due to the death itself, but rather the heart wrenching idea of being the father in that scenario as I approach 30.  It's was wild to feel that pain for just me.  Realizing that it must be that much more for that character, or someone that can directly relate (for example those who are fathers, and God forbid, those who have lost children)  and that all came from just 2 cutscenes at the beginning of chapter 5. It really is one of the strong parts of the game. 

 

The game also re-contextualizes the chapters of the game by tying them to the stages of grief.  This context though is hit or miss.  For example, I think it works really well in the first two chapters.  Chapter 1, called denial, sees the character chasing after the red shade that seems to be denying his existence.  Ignoring him at every turn.  I didn't really catch this when I first played through it, but when I saw the chapter title in the select screen when going to pick up the missed collectibles, I got it.  I also got chapter 2 which is titled anger.  This chapter has you running away from this guy...

 

 

Who chases you throughout the level and its kind of scary and atmospheric.  (For the Record, this was my favorite chapter which is why he almost got the platinum panel, I decided to go elsewhere, but hey bonus art).  You can definitely see that the bird is angry.  

 

Where the comparison falls apart though are in bargaining and grief.   I don't really think that chapter 3 and 4 really do a good job at conveying that they are about those two parts of acceptance.  I have seen people say that chapter 1 is also a stretch since it feels like you're following the red shade more than him denying you, but I'll digress because either way its leaves half or more of the game as a miss on the whole scale.   

 

I think the game may have worked a bit better if the roles were flipped and it was actually the father who died, and the kid who was on the journey to overcome his grief, but then... that gut punch while probably effective, doesn't have the same oomph that the one they went with does.  Game design sure is tough...

 

 

 

END SPOILERS

 

The trophies for the game largely fall into three categories.  They are either story related (i.e. complete the chapter), collectibles (which are well hidden) or they are miscellaneous stuff.  There are a lot of collectibles in the game for its length, but none of them are missable since the game has a chapter select after finishing the main game, so you can always go back and grab the stuff you missed.  There really isn't anything difficult either.  The "hardest" trophy is a section where you have to swim through 3 tunnels using only one oxygen bubble.   It's not to challenging and you can just retry chapter if you end up failing.   Getting that trophy does preclude you from getting one of the collectibles though, so you'll have to come back for it.  

 

Overall Rime is a game that is ambitious in many areas, but forgets at times that it's a game and is supposed to be fun.  Some of its major themes do miss, and the controls are not good, but at the end of the day, I didn't hate my time with Rime.  On the contrary, most of the time I found myself enjoying the game.   I don't really think you'd be missing much though if you skipped out on this one, but if you're looking for an easy game, with nice visuals and music, there are worse ones out there than Rime.  

 

Enjoyment Score:  7/10

Difficulty Score 2/10

[Together_Comic]

 

Update 30: Platinum #60: The Legend of Heroes Trails of Cold Steel IV

 

Overview:

 

Trails of Cold Steel IV is a JRPG released by Falcom for the Playstation 4 in 2018.  It tells the story of the Ashen Chevalier Rean, his friends and students in Class 7, and their quest to stop the curse of Erebonia and defeat the great twilight.  As the fourth game in its own tetralogy and the 9^th or 10^th game of the long running Trails Series, 3 of which I have already reviewed in this checklist, I must say that having played the entire story, I must revise some of my opinions that I made on the earlier games, but more on that in the spoiler section.   As such, this will be a review for the culmination of the entire series.

 

Specifically For Cold Steel 4, not much has changed since Cold Steel 3 (other than the plot obviously) so many of the things that were good in the other Cold Steel Games have returned once again.  The characters are still mostly great.  The battle system remains great for customizing your characters into whatever you need them to be as well as plenty of interesting builds that can focus on one or more of the games other integrated combat mechanics.  The world build is again excellent, cleaning up a lot of my complaints from previous games and producing a satisfactory ending for the series.    If I had any complaints, there really isn’t much innovation from the previous game to this one, and some of the character resolutions didn’t feel entirely satisfying.

 

The Characters:

 

WARNING: This section will contain minor spoilers for the Cold Steel Series. 

 

Class 7

Machias: 

 

The definition of Mediocrity in combat, Machias is introduced to us as the son of Imperial Governor Carl Regnitz a commoner that has taken a high position in the imperial government.  He initially dislikes nobles due to things that happened in his past, but through his experiences with Class 7 he overcomes this distaste and eventually becomes a member of the inspectorate that audits government organizations.  He holds firm to his beliefs and is a coffee and chess enthusiast.  Unfortunately, after the second game he really doesn’t get much attention as a character in the spot light.  He confronts someone who seems to have lost their way and gets them back on track, but otherwise is just sort of along for the ride.  What’s there is good, but they sort of forget about him after his arc in CS 1 and 2. 

 

Jusis:

While my least favorite combat character in the game, Jusis really gets Falcom’s attention when it comes to character development.  Jusis is the second son of Duke Alberea on of the four great noble houses in Erebonia.  He constantly lives in the shadow of his brother Rufus and as a major noble, naturally falls into rivalry with Machias.  Eventually they put their differences aside and become friends and after the events of CS 2 takes over as acting duke of his house.  During that time, he develops a close friendship with Milium another of the members of class 7 and during CS 3 and 4 we see him evolve as a character due to his friendship with her.  He has a fondness for horses which comes in handy later on when he can borrow horses for the party to travel.  Jusis is a complete character from start to finish,  Now if only he wasn’t worthless in combat. 

 

Emma:

Spoilers for the first game.  It’s really tough to talk about her in terms of the series without mentioning this specific thing which is revealed halfish to three quarters through the first game. In contrast to Jusis, Emma is probably the best combat character in the game, though that may just be because the Magic Focused Master Quartz are just that good.   Aside from that she is introduced to us as Class 7’s class president and highest scorerer (makes sense she’s in the literature club) and later is anigramed straight into Class 7’s  resident Sorcerer.  As a member of the Hexen clan, her goal is to find and guide the would be awakener to (who guessed it) awaken the Ashen Knight and become one of the Chevalier’s.  As the series progresses, she takes a larger role as a member of her Hexen clan and continues to lead Class 7.  A lot of the plot of CS 3 and 4 revolve around her and she is always great.  In terms of best girl, while she isn’t my choice, I probably wouldn’t argue with you if you picked her.

 

Alisa:

Spoiler Alert Again for that first game, though if you pay even the remotest of attention, you’re likely to figure this out basically from the moment you meet the character.  As probably the best support character in the game Alisa is one who you never mind having foisted upon you by the game.  Alisa initially has the classic anime misunderstanding with the main character and thus is huffy about having landed on top of him and is probably falcom’s choice as the “main love interest”.  That said, Alisa is an excellent engineer, member of the renowned Reinford Family, and pretty good Lacrosse player as well.  Her initial arc isn’t all that compelling focusing on her relationship with a workaholic mother, but as the series progresses her family drama somehow always ends up in the middle of it.  I find it kind of interesting how the ending of the series changes based on certain happenstances with her and it definitely keeps her interesting and relevant throughout.  As far as best girl, I think that Emma and my other choice are slightly better, but again wouldn’t argue if you chose her. 

 

Fie: 

One of the better physical attackers in the games, Fie is introduced as class 7’s outcast of outcast character.  She is mysterious, an anomaly, and is just sort of there because of Sara (more on her later).   As her past is revealed, Class 7 slowly changes her and her initial arc is that of becoming a true part of class 7.   In later games, she becomes a bracer and  a pretty important section of the plot revolves around her and said past and the way the game handles her keeps her interesting and relevant. As far as best girl goes, I think Fie is the first second tier choice.  She’s fine, but there are better options. 

 

Laura: 

You see I like Laura, in fact, she is probably my favorite character in the game, though as an attacker she’s kind of mediocre.  The problem is her character arc is kind of nonexistent.  She is introduced as the daughter of the radiant blademaster, one of Erebonia’s best swordsmen, and her goal is to live up to that legacy.   When Fie’s past is discovered, she has a brief spat with her, but otherwise she is an encouraging and ideal knight throughout the rest of the series.  She just sort accomplishes her goal without much trial or hardship.  In CS 3 and 4 there are sections of the plot that are supposed to contribute to her character, but she just sort of takes them in stride.  IDK.  She works, she just isn’t all that interesting as a character in the plot.  In contrast, This is best girl, don’t @ me.   She is just so damn supportive, how could Rean not fall for her.

 

Elliot:

Elliot is one of the first characters that we interact with in the entire series and he is definitely in contention for best Bro (with Crow and Giaus as the other contenders) Elliot is a music lover, who wanted to go to music school.  Unfortunately, his father a commander in the army, forced him into Thor’s Military Academy.   Elliot is later thankful for this as he grows extraordinarily from his time at Thor’s and is eventually able to graduate and become one of the hot new music producers of the time.   Sadly, that’s basically all that his character does throughout the series.  Later he serves some important plot functions with his music, but he never really gets any more growth.  As far as combat, Bro is supposed to be your healer, but really F that.  Offensive Arts this guy and he will blow up most of his opponents pretty easily.

 

Giaus: 

Giaus is male Laura.  What I mean by this is that there really isn’t an arc for the character.  The guy starts off as a pretty complete person and only maintains this as the game moves forward.  Giaus is not a traditional citizen of Erebonia as he belongs to the tribes of Nord.  This gives him an interesting place as cultural foil for the nobility/commoner focus of the citizens of Thors.  Later he also becomes attached to a different faction which should be more interesting than it is, but the game never really focuses on it and simply uses it as a reason to justify some plot conveniences that the game needs to take.  In combat, Giaus is mostly fine, however in CS4 specifically he is probably the most busted character in the game.  His S-Attack delays all enemies and if you set him up correctly you can make it so that your opponents never get a turn. 

 

Sara:

Sara is a bracer turned instructor for the newly installed class 7. She initially is responcible for training up the new class 7 into something special.  After the events of CS2, however, she returns to the bracer guild.  She starts to see her students, who have now graduated, as equals and joins them on their quest to end the great twilight.  Her own personal arc involving her father is also quite touching and works as a way to get you more invested in her.  As far as combat goes, in the first two games, she is bad.  Mostly because she functions as a guest character and you cannot manipulate her master quartz and in some instances her main quartz this means you’re stuck with the default ones which generally aren’t good.  After she joins Class 7 as a main member she becomes the second best physical character in the game (barring cheese) after Fie.

 

Rean:

Rounding out the original Class 7 Rean is the main protagonist of the series and most of its happenings with a few exceptions are told from his point of view.  As the leader of the original class 7 and the teacher of the new class 7, Rean becomes the rallying point for all of the friends he has to join together and fight.  He tends to take things into his own hands and is always willing to sacrifice himself to help and save others.  While admirable, his friends often encourage him to share his burden as they walk with him to determine the fate of Erebonia.  As far as combat goes, Rean is always useful.  Depending on the game, he is good as a delay attacker, an S-Craft Spammer, or a mage.  If you want you can also build him as a guaranteed crit machine or an evasion tank.  He has the ability to justify basically anything.

 

Juna:

Juna is a Crossbell native and member of the New Class 7 under the tutelage of instructor Rean.   She also serves a bridge between this game and the previous Trails to Azure and Trails to Zero.  As she is acquainted with the Crossbell Special Support Section.  Initially unhappy to have landed under this particular instructor, she uses the opportunity to grow and gradually develops into the heart of the New class 7.   In combat, she herself is remarkably average.  However, her order ability (exclusive to CS3 and CS4) is absolutely busted allowing you to inflict the break state more reliably on enemies.  As far as best girl, why would you pick her?  She is your student you weirdo! Don’t tell me you did it for the trophy….

 

Kurt:

Kurt is a member of the Vander house and a member of the new class 7.  A family of bodyguards charged with protecting the imperial family.   However, due to the events of CS2, the house has fallen out of favor and Kurt must confront the Prince and his new lust for Power.  His arc has an interesting premise, the problem is the character himself is pretty bland.  He simply lacks personality, that said there are still some pretty good moments with the character.  In combat, Kurt is a passible evasion tank, but you don’t really want to use him if either Fie or Sara is available since they are just strictly better.

 

Altina:

The “Final” of the initial members of the new class 7, Altina is probably the best written character in the games.  The problem is I cannot really tell you why, because basically any part of it would be a spoiler, so I’m going to ask you to just take my word for it.  In Combat she functions as a pretty good mage, though I would rate her as third or forth best, but that still makes her a top half character in the games, so do with that what you will. As far as bet girl… see Juna’s entry, except now it’s even weirder… stop it.

 

Now for the particularly astute among you who have played these games, you’ll notice that I left out quite a few of the characters from class 7 like:

 

 

In a similar vein to Altina, talking about these characters require a lot of spoilers and I’m sure that you didn’t want to read the same entry 4 or 5 times.  That said they are all great from a writing point of view, though Musse (green hair girl) is pretty weird.  From left to right you have Millium: Bad in Combat.  Crow: Pretty good in CS4,  Musse: Second best Mage in the game and Ash: Worse Laura in combat, and Laura is already not that great.    

 

One of the interesting things about this game is that there are no throw away characters for example

 

 

ALL of these characters play a pretty major role in the most of the games, some more, some less, but that is a huge cast to keep together.  That’s not to mention that all of the students of Thors, both the original and new all have distinct personalities and play into the missions and side missions of the game.  The and Most of them are good for what they are.  The law of conservation of characters is real with Falcom and I could be here forever talking about it.  The characters here are great. 

 

The Combat

 

In the Trails of Cold Steel games, there are 2 major facets to how characters play in combat, Master Quartz, and Traditional Quartz.  There are also brave orders and S-Crafts that matter too, but those are what they are.  Where the combat really shines is the former two.   They make each character customizable to what you want to do with them in the game.   Each character is allowed 1 Master Quartz and 1 Submaster Quartz.  These should be thematic to what you want to do with the character.  They are then allowed 7 Quartz slots, with 3 of them being restricted to one of the specific types of quartz.  Lets take Rean for Example.  

 

 

This is a Sample Build from the Trails 4.  Note that we have Brigid as a master quartz so lets take a look at what that does. 

 

 

So at level 8 like it is, Rean gets 20 Cp per enemy killed,  4 CP per Turn and a one time boost of 175 CP if his health gets low.   (CP being the point system used for abilities in this game)  So this Rean is going to look to spam his abilities.  For a Sub Quartz we have Minotauros.  Minotauros has 3 abilities as well.  It deals extra damage but delays you more before your next turn.  Increases your break damage by 150% and increases your critical rate.  However, since it’s the subquartz we only get the first of these abilities.  So if we take these in conjunctions we can understand that Rean is trying to use a powerful ability with heavy cp to wipe out all of the enemies which then in turn returns the CP.  This Rean is probably good for fighting random enemies on the field.  If you were to switch from Brigid to Magius a magic master quartz, Rean would no longer be good at this and instead would be better at using spells. 

Going back to our original picture we can also look at the quartz this Rean has equipped. 

 

 

Notice how we are required to have a red and two blacks in our build.  We our augmenting are master quartz with say Carnelia that increases our attack by a lot, as well as rakan and break 3.  Both of these increase our break damage.  Meaning that if Rean doesn’t kill the enemies with his abilities, he can break them.  This renders them unable to attack and our party could then easily finish them off.  This Rean could also for example use the Goldia Gem or Mars Gem which would give more strength as well as crit chance. 

 

However, there are also limitations, each master quartz can only be equipped once so you can’t just spam the good ones over and over, and the game forces you to take different characters a lot of the time, so it’s important that you are flexible with your builds.   So maybe this Rean would be good in one area, but in the other you need a mage so you swap him to that instead.   It really gives a lot of play to the combat in the game and I could spend many a minute just playing around with character builds to optimize them. 

 

There are downsides to this though.  Once you do figure out the optimal builds and get them into place, the system really stagnates.  You become really powerful and there isn’t much to challenge you.  As such, after that combat can become a chore, since there is a lot of it in each area and you have to keep fighting to collect the enemy data for one of the trophies.   Not to say the game is easy, but the difficulty curve seems backward.  It starts hard and gets easier rather than the converse. 

 

The Trophies

 

Like basically all the other Cold Steel games, CS4 suffers from an infinite number of missible trophies as well as that whole having to play through it a second time in order to see all of the endings for the bonding trophies. 

 

I feel like I basically have to follow a guide in order to be able to not infinitely run around the map talking to everyone, their mom, their dog, and their SO.  Either that or play through the game so many times that you can’t help but find it all.  That said, that’s just the nature of trophy hunting.  I feel like one way or another I eventually run into these types of games, but PSN profiles has a really good guide that helps and is basically spoiler free that gives a checklist style of things needed to get these profile notes and other missables.  

 

The second playthrough also wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  My first playthrough clocked in at just over 80 hours so I was definitely concerned about having to go back through the game again, but after skipping all the cutscenes and not particularly going out of my way to do the side stuff I was able to get through the stuff I needed in about 8 hours.   

 

The rest is just the typical fare.  You need to do specific things in combat, but if you’re just playing the game normally most of those things are going to happen pretty naturally.  I think I had all the combat trophies by about halfway through my first playthrough of the game. 

 

Summary

 

Cold Steel IV is a pretty great game.  It is a good ending to a long running series that I have been playing since my Persona 4 gave me the JRPG itch again.   The gameplay balance tweaks and 80 plus hours of lore and content make it very solid.  

 

The characters, combat, and worldbuilding are among the higher side of the genre and while it may not live up to the powerhouses of the aforementioned P4, this is still a major selling point on the game.  I would only hesitate to recommend CSIV and the series to people if they aren’t a fan of the long form RPGs, because if you start this journey it’s going to probably be a 400ish hour investment over the four games and not a lot changes from game to game.  That said if you do like the genre, give the series a shot. 

[Together_Comic]

Update 31: 100% #10 Mega Man Legacy Collection 

 

Been a while PSN profiles.  In my time away I have managed to learn Necromancy, in that I will revive this thread from death.  That being said,  I've been away reading.   Every year, GF_Comic and I will take some time to do a buddy read of some series or another and have been for as long as we've been friends, even before we started dating.  Last year we did the Wheel of Time, this year we did Cradle series by Will White.  It's pretty interesting for a series that's 10 books deep, but its mostly what I would call junk food.  Tasty and appealing, but there isn't a lot to it.   Anyway this isn't a book review site so lets get to the meat and potatoes of today's completion.   

 

If you'll indulge the nostalgia trip,  back in the distant land of 1996 (gosh I'm getting old) little 4 year old comic got a gift from Grand Pa, his very own NES complete with a whopping 6 games.  Mario Bros 1, and 3, Tetris, Jeopardy,  Duck Hunt, and Mega Man 2.   Throughout the next 2 years of my life I played the ever-loving mess out of these games, mostly Mario and Tetris.   What I remember largely about Mega Man was that I didn't care for it.  Mostly because I don't think I ever beat a single one of the bosses at the end of the stages, and if I did, it was only one. The game was hard for a 4 year old and it relied on a weird password system to keep your progress so I always got put back to square one (not very far I realize now).  

 

Fast forward a few years and my next experience with Mega Man came when I got my very own Game Boy Advance and a copy of Mega Man Battle Network.  This time I loved it.   I think I played every single one of those up till either BN5 or 6 and I'd play it again today if capcom released this collection (Capcom PLS!!!) . This culminated with me picking up Mega Man 11 last year on a whim and enjoying that game quite a lot more than I expected to.  All of that to get to here where I found Mega Man Legacy Collection 1 and 2 on sale for like $5-10 together so I took the plunge.  

 

Nostalgia trip complete how does Mega Man stack up today.... well it depends on which game we are talking about.  What I liked the most about MM11 was the level design and the boss fights and from what I remember of BN what kept me coming to those games was also the bosses.  And I must say on that front, All the games are very solid, and improve every game.   From MM1  Ice man is a stand out in that he rewards being precise with your jumping, has a pattern that is learnable and predictable (they all do, but I still stand by the idea that both cut man and guts man move to the least convenient spot out of pure spite). As you move forward you get more and more standouts (Air Man, Bubble Man (Not the one of Elemental Hero Fame), Quick Man, Gemini, Snake, Drill, Skull, Dive, etc.) you get the idea, if I named all the good bosses we could be here all day.  Not that I mind, but I'm sure you have things to do.  The level design elements are a lot more hit or miss.  I think for this collection, 1 is definitively the worst, the peak is in 5, and the others range somewhere in between with the higher numbers tending toward the top and the lower numbers tending towards the bottom.  I mean consider this level 

 

 

 

This is the first half of Bomb Man's stage from MM1.   It's basically all the same all the way to the halfway point where it moves to a vertical section that is basically still the same then you jump on some blocks over some spikes and then you're at the boss.  It just doesn't really do it for me.  Granted when this game came out in 1987 its hard to complain about this kind of design.  I mean no one complains that SMB1 is samey, but I don't think it holds up in todays landscape.  Contrast that to this stage from Gravity Man in MM5 

 

 

 

And we can really see the improvement.  It's still not going to match up to current game design, but it came a long way in the 5 years between the two games. 

 

I'd say as far as MM 1-6, if you aren't getting the nostalgia out of the games, then they aren't the greatest, but honestly I can say that about most games of this era.  I can definitely see the appeal for those playing them when they released.   The part of this collection that does stand out though is the challenges.  It's also where most of the difficulty comes in.   There are 54 challenges to complete, each on a timer and depending on how quickly you can complete them, you get one of three medals.   There is a trophy for 50 Golds, meaning you have to get pretty good at mega man if you want the 100%.   There are effectively 2 types of challenge: stage remixes and boss fights.  The stage remixes take various sections from each of the in-game stages and put them together in a hodgepodge and asks you to complete them quickly pretty please.  This, This is what gave me my fix for stage design that I wanted.  Even if the stages themselves from each of the games (especially the early ones) wouldn't be particularly compelling, if you took the best part of each of them and string them together, you end up with pretty good stages.  Then there are the boss rush stages which either consist of getting an end game boss  that you gotta do fast (Sonic style) or fighting all the bosses back to back (and you still gotta go fast).  These boss rushes are probably the more challenging sections of the game as well.  I struggled a lot particularly on the MM2 boss rush, mostly because the timer was really tight or at least it was for my skill level.   I had several runs that finished 1 or 2 seconds over the time limit, but eventually I got one that was 1 second under.   The other ones I really struggled with were the buster only boss rushes: 1 and 2 particularly.  I think I might have been my own worst enemy on these though since mostly I was overly focused on getting a near perfect run when really the only thing I needed to work on was the elecman fight which has a very nice and cheesy strat to get through it.   

 

I also have some nitpicks.  I mean it wouldn't be a TC tread without nitpicks, right?   First of all, I have discovered that the Mega Man games were designed with a D-Pad in mind....

Now that may not come as a surprise to the rest of you.... especially since the original controller looked like this...

 

 

 

But for me, the surprise came around 10 or so challenges in when I found myself in the portion of the mega mans where they have added the slide, and my Left Analog Stick using self kept accidentally sliding from trying to make inputs quickly.   Consider this set up. 

 

 

 

Napalm Man is going to start the fight by firing 3 missles at you which you can fire a orb at him at start and then between the second and third.   Then he's going to make the jump, and you can hit him again.  3 Missles again but this time you cant shoot him between because the missles are to close and you'll get hit, so you need to just dodge then he'll jump again and you can hit him again.  Then you he'll fire 2 bombs above you and the only way to dodge is to jump up, but not over or he'll jump into you,  dodge the explosions tilt back, so you don't land on him then slide under him when he jumps a la the green line.  That requires a   Input all in quick succession and I am not good enough to do that consistently with a d-pad.  Its the reason fighting games use a stick.  The problem is sometimes when I did this I would tilt the stick slightly down when moving from the left input to the right input so when I hit the ground I would slide right into the boss.  "But TC I hear you cry just take the hit, it isn't a damageless attempt" and to that I say ...   why didn't I think of that. 

 

While we are nitpicking I would also get an occasional dropped input which can be frustrating especially in some situations, particularly in the level remixes where it can cause you to just fall into a pit.  There was also this weird thing where if you were using the buster and you pressed the button on the same frame you turned around Mega Man would fire the buster the wrong direction which led to infinite rage on my part.  And it was definitely the games fault and not mine.  ?

 

Still, it isn't a fib to say that I had fun with this collection.  The 6 games themselves were kind of whatever, but I had a great time with the challenges and It did indeed scratch the mega man itch I've been having.  I'll probably get around to the second half which if completion percentage is any indicator which it only some times is, is a bit easier than this one.   Would I recommend this to others?   Only if you have nostalgia for the original Mega Man or just really like Mega Man in general.  If that's the case, this one is serviceable.  However, for your average gamer,  I'd probably just point you to MM11.

 

Thanks for reading.

 

~TC 

 

 

[Together_Comic]

Update 32:  Platinum Number 61: Dragon Age 2

 

The Game Itself:  

 

Dragon Age 2 (DA2) is an action RPG released by Bioware after the success of Dragon Age Origins (DA:O or Origins)  This one leaves behind the Warden from the first game and focuses on the so called "Champion of Kirkwall" and their adventures in Thedas. Along the way, in typical RPG fashion, you will encounter several potential party members to recruit, but using the games dialog, friendship, and rivalry system, you could end up making them leave if you consistently make choices they don't agree with or they may leave immediately if you do something that fundamentally goes against their belief system.  The story focuses around the growing conflict between the mages and the templars that was briefly explored in the first game, but you know the world ending blight kind of pushed everything to the backburner and now that peace has been established tensions are higher than ever.   The game is split into a three act structure with each act escalating in stakes until the last straw finally pushes the situation to its breaking point.  

 

The gameplay mechanics have been updated from the auto-battler of the original to a more hack and slash style, that still incorporates the character class abilities at the push of a button, or via a radial menu.   Returning from DA:O is the ability to equip your party with tactics which will allow you to set them to do specific things in certain situations.  For example,  you can have a character who drops below 25% drink a health potion,  or have your warrior follow up on a rogues disorientation ability for major damage.  You can also take control of them and act manually if a situation arises that you hadn't prepared for in your tactics menu, or if your particular strategy isn't quite working.  This is the bread and butter of DA2 Combat, and there is, in fact, a lot of it.  Luckily the tactics menu is in the same menu as the level up so when your party member gets a new ability you can just equip it there

 

Together_Comic's Thoughts: Warning Spoilers Below

 

The minute-to-minute gameplay has been largely updated and feels much more engaging than in DAO.  In origins I often felt like I was just standing there waiting on Cool Downs while my team just wailed on the Enemies on screen.  Well now I get to press X while waiting on cool downs and wail on the enemies on screen XD.  While it may not seem like much the moment-to-moment engagement did a lot to ensure that I felt like I was actually playing the game rather than watching it. 

 

I was initially worried that the characters would be terrible, but after playing through I found that that wouldn’t be the case.  Merrill is by far my favorite and has I think the most interesting (and brutal) story throughout the game.  Isabella is charming as well, I often found myself giggling at the quips she had with other party members as I traveled from placed to place.  If I had a complaint, Avalene is a little dry, but still I didn’t find her irritating or boring. 

 

The story has its problems (more on that shortly) but I was entertained for the most part throughout the entirety of my 60ish hour play time.  The story also does the thing where it starts en media res and then the story is a story being told to some third part.  I’m a sucker for this trope when it is done well, a la the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Persona 5, or The Emperor’s New Groove, and this is no exception.  The I guess for want of a better word inquisitor is questioning Varric on what happened with the champion and it is expertly done, cutting back to them at just the right moments and with the right amount of snark and commentary.  I love the moment where you can see that the questioner has come around on the Champion and doesn’t quite think they are as awful as they thought in the beginning of the game. 

 

Now the pacing for the story is well a different story.  It’s just not great through out the entirety of the game.  The game is divided into three distinct acts. 

 

The first is the “Expedition Act”  The party want’s to join in on an expedition into the under roads, notable home of the darkspawn of DAO fame, to make money I guess?  They are of course denied and meet Varric the dwarf.  Varric says if they can’t get on as workers, perhaps they can become investors.  The expedition needs money and a way into the deep, and if they provide that, they can come along.  From there Act 1 boils down to “make 50 gold” which gives an excuse to go around doing quests and when you do quest you can meet the party.  I actually wished they had focused on the “ending” of that act with Bethany/Carver being arrested as a mage / joining the templars / forced to become a grey warden.  I feel like that conflict actually would have driven the story much more effectively than the one we got with Varric.

 

Act 2 is the confrontation with the Qun and the resulting fallout of that, we find out what’s been going on with Isabella the whole time and why the Qun are in the city at all, but you only have up to 4 encounters with the Qun

 

Act 3 is the boiling point of the mages vs templars which serves is meant as the primary conflict point of the game.  Where we learn that all the homies hate Anders! Like “Fuck Anders”.  And that both of the pillars the mages and the templars are big piles of garbage. 

The idea of the Mages and Templars coming to a head with the church acting as a passive peacemaker is inherently a great story payoff.   The Qun involvement is also interesting and I like the idea that we get to explore one of the less explored races from the first game.  The overall problem is that none of these points seem connected at all, and all feel entirely episodic.  Like the expedition is the Varric episode involving dwarfs and greed and betrayal.  The Qun is the Isabella episode and Act 3 is the Ander’s episode.  All of the plot points fall seemingly out of nowhere, and aren’t properly built up to for the payoff that is still good, even with the poor set up.  I can only imagine what it would be like if the game was just a little more baked. 

Another issue I had was the amount of seemingly necessary story that was hidden behind side quests.  For example, many of the mages vs templars stuff are all side quests and you would get practically no build up if you skipped them.    

 

 The game just lacks cohesion. I was informed that the game was only a 9 month development and the overall payoff for just 9 months is astounding, but I still wish we could just stick it back in the oven just a bit more. There’s a great game here if there was just a bit more polish. 

[Together_Comic]

Update 33:  Platinum Number 62-66 

 

So uhh.... despite my best efforts (well.. maybe not best per say),  I find myself rather behind on updates (again ?).  So lets rapid fire some off right here.

 

#62 Jak 3

Jak 3 is an action platformer ported from the PS2 and was one of my favorite series growing up.  Jak 3 iterates on the existing Jak 2 formula by expanding the playable area from just Haven City, to the desert wilds outside the city.  Look alive Ubisoft, Naughty Dog was making empty open worlds all the way back on PS2.  The story here still works and does it's best.  I still get a chuckle out of daxter and his antics, and from what I understand most people don't like the twist ending, but I thought it still worked.  That said, despite my childhood nostalgia for the series, this one didn't quite live up to what I remember.  Not that I think its bad, but as alluded to before the open world is largely empty, the story is middling, and the game play loop while engaging, doesn't carry the game as much as it did when I was 10.

Difficulty

Enjoyment

 

#63: Final Fantasy VIII

Final Fantasy VIII is a JRPG remastered from the PS1.  FFVIII building off of the success of FFVII is another sci-fi tinted adventure, rather than the traditional sword and magic style fantasy.  The feature that stands out the most to me in this one is the Junction system.  Each character is capable of junctioning different guardian forces (GFs) which bind to your stats like magic, strength, speed, etc.  You can then bind spells that you draw from enemies to each stat to increase them rather than leveling them up.   So for example if you draw 8 cures from an enemy, you can then bind those to your HP resulting in an increase,  then if you cast the cure, your max hp will decrease slightly.  Its an interesting system that trades power of magic with stats.  One thing that was kind of obnoxious is that the party kept getting split up and leaving and then rejoining which leaves me spending a lot in the menu reequipping everyone.  Criticisms aside, I do think that, on the whole, I like the system.  The story definitely jumps the shark. That often left me unable to take the entire thing to seriously, but I was still engaged and did follow the story. So much so, that I think I may find myself in the Ultimecia did nothing wrong camp.  She just constantly gets bodied by fate.  Overall, I was left with the feeling that this was good.  I do think its ultimately worse than the other PS1 Final Fantasy games, but maybe that's just my nostalgia carrying those games. 

 

Difficulty

Enjoyment

 

 

#64: Persona 5 Royal

Persona 5 Royal holds an interesting spot in my trophy collection.  It has become the only game that I have finished more than once.  After finishing FFVIII work and life took over and I didn't really have a lot of time to put into gaming for a while.  During that time, I found a buy one get one deal at a local flea market and since I was already purchasing a game from them grabbed this as the only other that I say that I had any interest in, and down the rabbit whole I went.  P5R is a cleaner version of the original game and adds in several characters, some extra activities, but is ultimately the same game.  Kasumi made a pleasant addition, though I was down on Maruki for most of the game, though I came around by the end.  What drew me to the replay though was the combat.  I wanted to mess around with different abilities and fusions and play on the hard difficulty this time, rather than normal.  I'm not sure if it was just my experience with persona at this point, or if its just the game, but I didn't really find hard that challenging.  Mostly its just the bosses that change at all and really they just hit a bit harder and it takes longer to kill them, but I did still have a good time.   There isn't much more that I can say about the game that hasn't already been said 1000 times in 1000 ways (some with the same four chords?) but the game and story are fantastic.  If you want to see me rave for several more paragraphs, my review of the original is here somewhere.

 

Difficulty

Enjoyment

 

#65 Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir

 

Let's just get this one out of the way, yes I had to look up how to spell that.  Odin Sphere: F*** this subtitle, has been sitting in my backlog for about a year.  I picked it up in my never ending quest to justify my vita purchase and started it while I was sitting in an airport waiting on my flight during the 4 hour layover.  I knew basically nothing going in, other than it was an RPG made by Atlus and I must say that the game didn't disappoint.  Odin Sphere: Leroy Jankins, follows the octopath traveler approach (well I guess octopath follows the Odin Sphere: left leg out approach since it came out first and is a remaster)  where the game is split into 5 characters.  You follow each of those characters through the story viewing their perspective and each route adds to the context of the plot as a whole.  Then they come together for an Avengers team up at the end.  One of the dangerous things about this style of game is that you can easily get in trouble if one of the characters isn't good and isn't fun to play with, but Atlus manages to make each character feel unique and also about the same strength as the other characters. Quite the feat.  Of course, the downside is to get the true ending you have to fight different bosses with what feels like subpar characters (I mean come on, Its like you designed the cauldron with Mercedes in mind!!)

 

Difficulty

Enjoyment

 

 

#66: Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana

 

This is my first foray into Falcom's other flagship RPG series Ys.  Which is weird since I'm playing what would be the 8th installment of the series first, but apparently that doesn't matter in the slightest.  Allow me to catch you up on the Ys lore.  *Ahem* Adol is an adventurer with a penchant for shipwrecks.  He's friends with a guy named Dogi and they travel together.  Sometimes they fight against an empire.  That's it, now you are ready to play any of the Ys games, which are buy the way action RPGs revolving around a sort of paper, rock, scissors, pierce, crush, slash sort of thing where you match the enemy to its weakness, there are also skills that do damage similar to a trinity force (shout outs to the Phreak fans).  Now when I posted about this before, I failed everyone by failing to mention the stand out part of this game, so let me correct that.  The soundtrack absolutely slaps.  I had like half of the songs in my head for days on end. Particularly that opening theme did things to me. The story is also good.  It has dinosaurs, which are always a plus, and I though I usually remember most of the main cast in an RPG the side characters I usually forget almost Immediately.  Not the case here, the entire cast is standout.  Dana in particular is a great addition.  Unfortunately, I have heard that the other Ys games aren't quite as good as this one, but at this point, I'd be willing to try another. 

 

Difficulty

Enjoyment

Best!

~TC

 

[Joe Dubz]

That is quite the list of stuff you have conquered since last round!! Congrats man, I also see you playing Slime-san... I think someone had alotta fun cowriting the trophy guide ? Hopefully you've found some use in it so far!

 

I just wanted to comment because I have seriously been thinking about playing through FFVIII again... It still to this day is one I have the fondest memories of, may even be my favorite? Nah, FF6 will always be #1 in my heart lol... Just can't get enough of the oldschool, JRPG style tho ? But glad you enjoyed it and keep killing it out here bud!

Edited October 3, 2022 by Joe Dubz

[Together_Comic]

17 minutes ago, Joe Dubz said:

That is quite the list of stuff you have conquered since last round!! Congrats man, I also see you playing Slime-san... I think someone had alotta fun cowriting the trophy guide  Hopefully you've found some use in it so far!

 

Lol, Slime-san has been good and the guide has been helpful, particularly about the advice to avoid having the arcade store bug out, collecting the apples once took long enough, I really don't want to have to do it twice.  The video guides to boss 4 also saved me a lot of headache.  I kept dying to one of his attacks in phase 3, couldn't figure it out.  Turns out the art I had on was obscuring the teleporter, died for like a solid hour trying to dodge the attack, would have not figured it out without the video. ??

[Joe Dubz]

23 hours ago, Together_Comic said:

 

Lol, Slime-san has been good and the guide has been helpful, particularly about the advice to avoid having the arcade store bug out, collecting the apples once took long enough, I really don't want to have to do it twice.  The video guides to boss 4 also saved me a lot of headache.  I kept dying to one of his attacks in phase 3, couldn't figure it out.  Turns out the art I had on was obscuring the teleporter, died for like a solid hour trying to dodge the attack, would have not figured it out without the video.

Yay, glad it's been helpful!! Yeahhh that stupid teleporter... It took me a while to figure that out as well for the very same reason!! But yes, good luck and as long as you do all the arcade games simultaneously, you should be fine. Please hit me up tho if you have any questions or suggestions to improve the guide otherwise!

[Together_Comic]

#67 Slime-san

 

Slime-san is a difficult precision platformer made by indy developer Fabian Rastorfer. It takes clear inspiration from titans of the genre and falls into many of the tropes and challenges I commonly associate with this type of game.  So what makes this Meatboy-like different from the rest, well for the most part its the phasing mechanic.  In slime-san you play as a green slime (duh?), and when you phase, you become intangible to things that are the same color.  So since you are green, green colored objects can be passed through when you hold the L1 or L2 button.  It provides for some interesting and unique challenges that aren't possible in other similar titles.  

 

The game is divided into 5 worlds, each with 20 levels.  Each level is then subdivided into 4 episodes which all need to be completed in succession to complete the level.  There are exceptions, 1 level in each world is a side-scroller or auto-scroller which are 1 and done, and level 20 of each world is the boss.  Speaking of which, the bosses in this game are all pretty fantastic, particularly the sheeple boss and Mama the big worm in the splash art.  The game also has tons of side content, including a rather bad doom 64 rendition (seriously moving camera in that one is a bitch.), a mario kart clone, some ddr, mega man homage, dnd all star the gelatinous cube, references to Orsen Scott Cards best novel (Speaker for the Dead in this case, but Ender's Game is also good. If you read, definitely check them out), some smash style break the targets, and even Godzilla makes an appearance.  The atmosphere of the game is really endearing, and I found myself often stopping to chat with the NPCs that came up from time to time in different levels, which I don't typically do in my precision platformers. 

 

Transitions are hard, so here's to ripping the bandaid off and talking about the less exciting parts of the video game.  The game is a buggy mess, which can be charming if it doesn't interfere with the gameplay to much.  I, for example, think that skyrim being held together by string and paper, and a bucket being able to just charge through walls is funny more than anything.  But here, its problematic.  On 3 separate occasions I had a glitch that rendered a level uncompletable for me, including some softlocks (really 4, but the last I sidestepped), 1 where one of the collectibles was unobtainable (again not as big a deal because I found a workaround), and 1 that was genuinely funny (one of the enemies just went berserk and started their best peter pan imitation), but did cause the level to be unbeatable, however dying fixed it. I also found it obnoxious, that sometimes seemingly when I would catch the edge of a platform and rocket into the air which would just kill me most of the time since it is hard to expect or predict. Though I will say that during some levels, I was able to turn this to my advantage by just jamming These bugs would be frustrating in any game, but in a game that asks you to beat each levels time trial having one glitch on a good run multiplies it even further.  Besides those bugs, sometimes the particular character you're playing will make a level unable to be completed. For example, Kawai-san is a character that has a higher jump, but is more floaty.  One of the episodes starts with a death bar immediately above you and entering the level automatically collects a feather which launches you into the air and kills you.  Its impossible to not die here so you can only just exit the level and switch to a different character who isn't as floaty.  Another level in the kraken extras is sometimes impossible with slime-san the default character.  There's a pool of water you have to jump into that can spawn at two different heights one a pixel higher than the other. If you get the higher pixel you can't reach the water so you have to die and hope to get the lower one the next time.  Another level has a cramped corridor, where you're intended to dash over an enemy to get by, if you are playing with the double-jump no dash character it's impossible to get by.  You get the idea.  It wouldn't be an issue, if it were like meat boy, where you could change the character in the pause screen, but here you have to specifically go to the shopping area to swap, meaning you have to leave the episode abandoning all progress for a level.  So for example if you've completed 3 out of 4 episodes, and you get to a part you cant complete with the character you're playing, you're going to have to do the other 3 episodes again, which feels bad.  These are pretty glaring flaws that detracted from my enjoyment of the game significantly.  I can forgive a lack of polish in indy titles most of the time, because I understand that the number of people working on the game is often small, and the projects themselves are often ambitious, but the game does need to function properly.  On a smaller note, I wasn't a fan of some of the new obstacles that were added in the Kraken campaign, and to a lesser extent the sheeple one.  Particularly the ink obstacle.  It feels like the dev went "you know what would make this harder, if you just couldn't see anything..." It felt uninspired and cheap to me as well as really slowed down the pace of the game turning these levels into essentially autoscrollers. 

 

On the whole, I think the potential for a great platformer is in here somewhere, but my experience with oversights and bugs drag down an otherwise very enjoyable game to a game that I found somewhere between okay and good. Which is  honestly kind of a shame, because it makes it tough for me to recommend this game to others, even though I want to.

 

On the difficulty side of things, it definitely is easier than N++ and Super Meat Boy the other two precision platformers I've completed.  If I had to rank it, I would put it probably just above a Crash 1 type game, somewhere in the 6-7/10 category. 

Until next time

~TC

 

 

 

 

Edited October 17, 2022 by Together_Comic

[Together_Comic]

Platinum Number 68

The Legend of Heroes - Trails from Zero

 

This is the 5th game of Falcoms long running Trails series that I've played and Ironically it happens chronologically some time between the events of the other 4 games I've played.  Without beating the dead horse too much, Trails from Zero is an JRPG revolving around the "Quartz System" where characters can equip different items (think materia) into various slots.  These items effect different stats or give you a unique effect.  For example, attack 1 increases your attack stat by 3% where as the scent quartz makes it more likely for enemies to notice you, but has a different upside.  The unique difference in this game is that you cannot directly equip "arts materia" like you can in more recent games.  Here you have to equip quartz in different combinations in order to generate enough of a type of quartz to give you different arts.  This means if you want an optimized character, you are going to have to sacrifice your magic attacks and vice versa.  If you want good magic attacks its difficult to optimize your character.  On the whole I think this system is pretty rewarding, but I like the increased variety in the newer games. 

 

Minor Spoiler Alert

 

The story here is pretty good.  Your main party consists of Lloyd the recently graduated police detective returning home to Crossbell after some time away, Elie the daughter of the mayor, Randy the ex-member of the Guardian Force, and Tio ward of the Epstein Foundation.  This unlikely group has been made into the Special Support Section to compete with the adventurer's guild in town.  Along the way a plot with the Mafia unfolds and its up to our team to figure it out and save the day.  In typical JRPG fashion, it does go off the rails at some point.  On the whole a good time, well paced, and thoroughly enjoyable.

End Spoiler

 

As for criticisms, this game is a port of a game from 2010 and honestly it definitely feels like it.  It lacks the polish of its modern day cohorts in the series and it definitely feels like it.  I think, had I played this game first it wouldn't feel as bad, but I was missing some of the features that are well implemented in the new game.  The trophy list here isn't awful, but it does incline you to several separate playthroughs (minimum 2, as some stuff is only accessible in a dungeon in NG+). By far the worst offender though, was the "Never Ending Stake Out" which asks you to play for 100 hours. I had everything else done at around 55 hours and had to just leave the game to idol for another 45 hours to get the trophy.  It fit better in CS1 where at least I didn't finish everything else for 80 hours or so, and eventually the did away with it. 

 

On the whole, I enjoyed the game and will continue to play these as they come out.  The age of them has tempered my expectations somewhat, but the story is good enough to carry the game which is all I really ask for in a JRPG.

 

 

As far as difficulty goes, the game isn't particularly hard.  Nightmare mode can be a challenge if you aren't prepared, but if you do it for new game + only the final boss can really give you trouble.

 

Platinum Number 69

Dark Souls

 

What can I say about a game so legendary that it has almost become a meme for anything remotely challenging in this day in age.  I've heard "The Dark Souls of This..." or "The Dark Souls of That..." and I must say having finally played the game itself that there are almost no games that are The Dark Souls of anything.  Here's my spicy take:  Dark Souls is not that difficult in its game play.  Is it harder than the average game, absolutely, but I feel most of the difficulty of Dark Souls comes from its unwillingness to tell the player anything and the unwillingness of most players to be extremely patient.  I followed the platinum guide here on the site for the game, mostly to ensure that I didn't miss any of the covenants or items required for all of the missable trophies and I must say, knowing where to go saved me a lot of time and deaths in the game.  I can't imagine how much more I would have died if I had to figure everything out myself.  For example, Transient Curses are one of the few ways to hit ghosts in New Londo in this game.  The only way to know that is to read the description of that item, which means you need to have the item.  Where do you get them?  Well you can buy 4 from a random merchant no where near New Londo... You can find 2 right before you head to the area the ghosts are in a hidden barrel... or you can buy them from a merchant halfway through the area with all of the ghosts.  The merchants only really help if you know what they are and what they do.  So really the game is expecting you to find the hidden item, and read the description for what you need.  I don't even think there's an NPC in the game that will tell you if you talk to them, which would have been nice.  To the other point, the game actively punishes players for running through it.  If you aren't careful around corners and in enclosed spaces, you will often find yourself walking into a trap or ambush.  This style of enemy placement was and still is unusual so unsuspecting players often find themselves at dying to random hollow A.  I would often find myself walking through an area only to run into an ambush, kill the enemies, and then have to homeward (best miracle in the game) back to the bonfire and do it all over again just to save myself the estus, so that maybe I wont die on the next random encounter/ambush.  All of these things combine for the game feeling more difficult than it actually is, at least in my opinion. 

 

I will add the Caveat that none of this is necessarily bad, in fact, this type of game design, when done well is absolutely astounding.   If we exclude side areas like Great Hollow, Darkroot Garden, and the like, Dark Souls from Undead Asylum through Anor Londo, is probably the best designed video game I have ever played.  The areas are excellent, the bosses are great, and the pacing is absolutely immaculate.  There is direction, as the guy standing right by the bonfire in Firelink tells you to ring the bells above the parish and down in blight town, but nothing like modern games with a minimap and an icon.  The areas are well developed and thought out, with multiple areas wrapping in and back onto themselves, creating shortcuts and finding new secrets and areas.  Taurus Demon --> Gargoyles --> Capra Demon -->Weeping Dragon --> Quelog --> Iron Knight --> Ornstein and Smough are all about as good as you can get in terms of boss design and escalating difficulty. Taurus demon teaches you about big enemies in narrow spaces, but gives you an out with the plunging attack.  Weeping dragon gives you Big Enemies in a generous space, but with low aggression, later you take what you learned about big enemies (i.e. stay close to them and to the side or back and they will have a harder time hitting you) and use it to fight iron knight (that is if he doesn't decide to just fall off.  Gargoyles teach you about multiple bosses at once, but only once they are both half health.  Capra Demon is a more aggressive multiple boss fight but the multiples dont have much health. Quelog is one boss but shes fast and swings wide.  Then you take all of that info and fight O+S who start as a multiple boss with one big and one small.  then you get to a big enemy in a big arena, but its more aggressive.  Just excellent design. 

 

Beyond that though, the game does fall out a bit for me.  The 4 lords souls are largely underwhelming.  4 Kings area host the aforementioned ghost and again I imagine its nigh impossible to figure out the transient curses without being told.  The boss fight itself is rather unexciting as it is what amounts to a damage check.  The fight only gets difficult if you find yourself fighting more than one king at a time.  So the plan of just run up and wack the boss is about the best you can do.  If you do die to this boss, your closest bonfire is firelink.  Even if you opened up the "shortcut" you'll need to run from the bonfire down to valley of drakes, run through the valley, into the back of new londo, then through the end of new londo and down the million steps OR just run through the entirety of New Londo again.  Both aren't an exciting prospect.  Catacombs and Tomb of the Giants is better, but I'm usually not a fan of dark areas.  Though this does introduce you to Patches one of my favorite NPCs in the game, but at the same time has bone beasts and bone wheels, two of my least favorite enemies in the game.... well call it a wash.  Nito is better than 4 kings, but not by much.  I think the best weapon against nito is nito as he will just take out the skeletons... The Dukes Archive is at least a good area, but its paired with crystal caves which I could do without.  Seeth is kind of whatever. I had 3 deaths to him.  One which is I think required, and the other 2 where to trying to cut off his tail which may be the only spot in the game where he can actually hit you...  And then there is Demon Ruins and Lost Izilith... by far the worst areas in the game, and not because of difficulty.  I really don't know what happened here.  there are a lot of good ideas.  Ceaseless Discharge is interesting.  I knew about the cheese from watching speedruns, but I'm not even sure that its cheese.  Then you get Asylum demon for the third time??? why though.. and then centipede demon is a buggy mess (no pun intended).  He actually ended up in the ceiling after he grabbed me?  This all culminates in bed of chaos...which is the worst boss in the game... Any time dark souls tries to be a platformer it fails utterly.  Understanding that the game is designed to make movement heavy and clunky, the platforming is added with the express purpose to be difficult.  The problem is that the platforming sections are the only times for me that the game doesn't really feel fair to me.  I died 14 times to bed of chaos.  Of those 14, in 10 of them I didn't even get touched by the boss.  I'm not sure what happened with lost Izilith as a whole, maybe they just ran out of money or time or both? At least the game ends on a high note, Kiln of the First Flame is perfect, and Gwen (if I'm following the story accurately) is an interesting final boss both mechanically and lore wise. 

 

Spoilers for the entire story of Dark Souls ( I Think, mostly I'm just trying to figure out if what I think is happening is happening. For Real Yall tell me)

 

It's almost a shame that this story is largely in the back ground.  I have pieced together what I think is happening and will put that here, please tell me if I'm wrong.  Ok so basically there initially was no life, only stone.  The world was ruled by these stone dragons.  Eventually there was fire and from fire came life, death, light and dark.  Ok so some powerful souls used the fire to acquire power.  Nito took death, the witch of izilith took life, gwen took light, and the undead ancestor took dark.  Nito, Izilith, and Gwen team up to take out the dragons with an assist from the traitor seeth the scaleless and the age of fire started (Opening Cutscene).  Ok from here lots of time has passed and a curse has been put on people making them undead.  These undead live over and over until they lose their will to live and thus become hollow.  They are then kept in an asylum.  The game starts and Oscar the homie drops us a key for us to make our escape.  We make our way towards the exit and bump into oscar again, who it looks like came out on the bad side of a fight with the asylum demon.  He asks us to take up his quest.  So we get out of there and go to firelink. At firelink, captain depression (though oddly not hollow) tells us to about the prophecy for the "chosen undead" to ring the bells.  So we go do that, and it awakens the primordial serpent frampt who tells us our destiny is to rekindle the fire and to go get the lord vessel from anor londo.  To get there we got to go through Sen's Chuckie Cheese knockoff.  So we arrive at anor londo, make our way through. Give the business to O+S and talk to Gwendolyn who I think is the daughter? of gwen.  She gives us the Lord Vessel and is like go succeed gwyn.  Back at frampt he takes to place the lord vessel after we bonk him on the nose for sleeping on the job. he tells us we need the souls of nito, witch of izilith, the four kings, and seeth. Nito and Witch seem self explanatory.  Unsure how Four Kings and Seeth fit in.  Maybe they were given souls for helping against the dragons?  To get to four kings we need to go to the abyss, but thats not possible without someway to traverse the abyss (NPC guy in the church) he tells us to learn from artorius.  Well there's a grave where the forest coven cat tells us about the "myth of artorius"  so we go there and fight the dog with the sword and he gives us the covenant of artorius, which lets us go kill 4 kings.  We kill the other 3 and boom back to burn the souls to go see gwyn.  Here we see that the lord of the sun has literally been ruling over the ashes of his empire.  Lord of Cinder is such a damning name showing what it cost him when he went hollow.  From there our choices are to relight the flame and restart the cycle or rule over the dark.  Dark Souls is a sad Video game.  Most of the NPCs if you follow there quests to completion end up dead or hollow or insane or mind controlled.  I've probably also missed a bunch as the story is hidden in descriptions of stuff and random NPC dialog its there, but its hard to find.

 

On the whole, I really enjoyed my time with Dark Souls.  It has an Exceptional Start and then a mediocre finish.  which lands it squarely in the

 

 

Difficulty wise it's definitely on the tougher side

 

 

~TC

 

[Copanele]

On 11/21/2022 at 5:14 PM, Together_Comic said:

 

Platinum Number 69

Dark Souls

 

 

 

What can I say about a game so legendary that it has almost become a meme for anything remotely challenging in this day in age. 

 

That's one nice number for one nice game. Congrats there!

I am really glad that you started with Dark Souls, the one game that (in my humble opinion) has the best atmosphere of them all. As you said, it's a very unforgiving game if you play it blind, but

once you get the good info then it's not as obtuse. Just thinking about how the Transient Curse works or how to access the DLC is crazy enough.

On 11/21/2022 at 5:14 PM, Together_Comic said:

To the other point, the game actively punishes players for running through it.  If you aren't careful around corners and in enclosed spaces, you will often find yourself walking into a trap or ambush.  This style of enemy placement was and still is unusual so unsuspecting players often find themselves at dying to random hollow A.  I would often find myself walking through an area only to run into an ambush, kill the enemies, and then have to homeward (best miracle in the game) back to the bonfire and do it all over again just to save myself the estus, so that maybe I wont die on the next random encounter/ambush.  All of these things combine for the game feeling more difficult than it actually is, at least in my opinion. 

 

Hah you cracked the code  that was Miyazaki's intention as well, basically "if you would actually BE in this mad dangerous world, would you actually run headfirst like a madman in the very first open room that you find without at least checking if it's not a trap?"

I love how Dark Souls asks you to use a bit of actual common sense in its approach. At least in the first level, Undead Burg.

On 11/21/2022 at 5:14 PM, Together_Comic said:

I will add the Caveat that none of this is necessarily bad, in fact, this type of game design, when done well is absolutely astounding.   If we exclude side areas like Great Hollow, Darkroot Garden, and the like, Dark Souls from Undead Asylum through Anor Londo, is probably the best designed video game I have ever played.  The areas are excellent, the bosses are great, and the pacing is absolutely immaculate.  There is direction, as the guy standing right by the bonfire in Firelink tells you to ring the bells above the parish and down in blight town, but nothing like modern games with a minimap and an icon.  The areas are well developed and thought out, with multiple areas wrapping in and back onto themselves, creating shortcuts and finding new secrets and areas.  Taurus Demon --> Gargoyles --> Capra Demon -->Weeping Dragon --> Quelog --> Iron Knight --> Ornstein and Smough are all about as good as you can get in terms of boss design and escalating difficulty. Taurus demon teaches you about big enemies in narrow spaces, but gives you an out with the plunging attack.  Weeping dragon gives you Big Enemies in a generous space, but with low aggression, later you take what you learned about big enemies (i.e. stay close to them and to the side or back and they will have a harder time hitting you) and use it to fight iron knight (that is if he doesn't decide to just fall off.  Gargoyles teach you about multiple bosses at once, but only once they are both half health.  Capra Demon is a more aggressive multiple boss fight but the multiples dont have much health. Quelog is one boss but shes fast and swings wide.  Then you take all of that info and fight O+S who start as a multiple boss with one big and one small.  then you get to a big enemy in a big arena, but its more aggressive.  Just excellent design. 

 

Damn, that's a great way of showing it  did not realize that all the previous boss fights actually would prepare you for the O&S fight. 

On 11/21/2022 at 5:14 PM, Together_Comic said:

Beyond that though, the game does fall out a bit for me.

 

Unfortunately... the game has been rushed. Even the director Miyazaki apologized for Lost Izalith, due to time constraints he had to wrap up the game there. This is the reason why you have so many copy/paste Taurus Demons, Capra Demons, Dragon Butts and...whatever Bed of Chaos is supposed to be)

 I think you might like this interview with the team, where the Bed of Chaos explanation is contained as well  

 

https://www.giantbomb.com/forums/dark-souls-6255/dark-souls-design-works-translation-npcs-and-monst-576001/

On 11/21/2022 at 5:14 PM, Together_Comic said:

 

Spoilers for the entire story of Dark Souls ( I Think, mostly I'm just trying to figure out if what I think is happening is happening. For Real Yall tell me)

 

 

Pretty much you nailed the story  the thing is, the Fire that Gwyn discovered was supposed to fade out as a natural cycle of life, however Gwyn refused to accept that and sacrificed his soul in order to rekindle the flame and prolong his age of godhood. 

Doing that however caused the whole Undead Curse (because you know...Gwyn messed with the order of life and such). Sooo some people became undead, BUT they turn hollow the moment they lose their purpose in life (either abandon it like that Crestfallen Warrior or succeed in it, like Siegmeyer).

 

That's all pretty much. The Dark Souls story told via items and vague descriptions idea came from Miyazaki's childhood, when he read some English fantasy books but couldn't understand the whole story because of his limited knowledge of English. So he kinda wanted to transpose the same feeling in his games. Not gonna lie, it's one unique way of telling a story  that's why some details are unknown (who the hell is Allfather Lloyd?)

 

On 11/21/2022 at 5:14 PM, Together_Comic said:

 

On the whole, I really enjoyed my time with Dark Souls.  It has an Exceptional Start and then a mediocre finish.  which lands it squarely in the

 

 

Difficulty wise it's definitely on the tougher side

 

 

~TC

 

Glad you loved it! Really enjoyed this review  

best of luck with Dark Souls II! Don't forget to level up ADP!

[Together_Comic]

Platinum #70

Dark Souls 2

 

I don't often play a sequel right after the first game, but Dark Souls made such an impression on me that I thought to make an exception.  Without all the hemming and hawing I'm going to go ahead and say that this one is worse, like a lot worse than the first one.  That said, the same is true for somewhere between 50-60% of the games on my account, and I did have a good time with the game, there where just some creative choices that where made, that ended up not being to my liking. 

 

Warping without a Lord Vessel

 

One of the things about DS1 that made it so interesting was that when you went off exploring into the world unknown, you where in it for the long hall.  If you descended down into blighttown to take care of quelog and ring the second bell, you where committed.  If you wanted out, you had to climb all the way back out of the pit.  It made for an immersive experience where exploring the dangers really felt well dangerous.  If you ran out of purple moss in the swamp, you where just going to have to deal with the poison, Siegmeir style.  That or climb all the way back out.  Warping was out of the question.  That means that the level design by necessity had to be meticulously planned and creatively designed to make or the game was going to be an absolute chore.  About half way through, when it came time to explore some of the more remote areas, the game gave the ability to warp, but only to certain bonfires. It worked out to make a dynamic experience where simple travel was never super frustrating.  In Dark Souls 2, warping is enabled from the start to and from any bonfire you have rested at.  This means that the world ends up looking more like a hub and spokes style, which while not bad in and of itself definitely is a downgrade from the artistic expression DS had.  The world is no longer interestingly connected, its just a lot of lines.  You go Medula --> Forest of Giants --> lost bastille --> sinner's rise  or you can do heide's --> huntsman copse --> harvest valley --> earthen peak --> iron keep or etc. You all get the idea.  There is some divergence, for example shaded woods leads to bright stone cove, drangleic castle, and Aldia's keep, but the moments there are few and far between.  I get it though.  It doesn't make a lot of sense to spend a lot of time meticulously planning when the warp can simply take you back to where you need to be.  It did also let them remove leveling up from every bonfire and instead ask you to go back to Medula.  This was more annoying than anything as it meant having to look at two extra loading screens anytime you needed to spend your souls.  On the whole, I didn't like the change very much.  It made the world design feel linear and not as interesting.

 

The See Me Rolling, They Hatin'

 

People who have played dark souls one know that the roll is one of the most powerful tools you have in getting through the game.  It seems like DS2 wanted to nerf it a little bit so they tied the number of invincibility frames your roll gives you to your agility score.  In DS1 your roll gives you on average 11 frames of invincibility and the game runs at 30 frames per second so about a third of a second of invulnerability.  In dark souls 2, in order to get the same amount (approximately) you need an agility score of 100.  There are several stats that effect agility but the one that does it to any real degree is adaptability (adp), and I'm going to go out on a limit here an say that adp is a mistake.  To get the desired agility score, you would need 25 points in adaptability that's about a third of your levels for an average playthrough.  Theoretically that's okay.  Just like damaging stats, health, and stamina, you can just slowly improve it over the course of the run.  The problem is that some players may not level adaptability and if they do, it may not be the first thing that they go to improve.   Stacked on top of that is that the world branches off into 4ish distinct paths and each path (mostly anyway) is available right from the beginning of the game.  And whether people like it or not, the difficulty of the game is one of the things that makes Dark Souls games, Dark Souls.  What does all this mean? Well when designing enemies and boss fights, the devs have to assume that you will have a certain amount of adp. This leads to crazy tracking and awful hitboxes that make it looks like the game is just bullshit instead of understanding what the player did wrong. 

 

Dark Souls 2 has Turn Based Combat.

 

One one of the things that I learned very early with this game is to NEVER PRESS R2 (unless you have a big stick).  Why? Because the extra damage you get is very small and the amount of recovery frames is going to get you hit every single time.  The amount of recovery frames in general are staggering in DS2 and turn most bosses into a turn based affair.  Take DS1 for comparison, in DS1 you can roll out of most attacks very quickly after the attack completes.  What that means is, if you are good, you can sneak in extra attacks on bosses and still dodge safely. This makes combat dynamic do you try to get in that extra hit to kill the boss, or do you play it safe and back off until you find another opening.  There is a risk/reward system going on.  In DS2 there is no reward only risk.  If you attack when it isn't your turn your going to get walloped and most of the time, that's going to combo into another hit and you are just going to die.  This happens because it takes significantly longer to roll out of an attack (10-15 frames) which is slower than the amount of time it takes for an enemy to attack.  Enemies also recover more quickly in DS2 so depending on your weapon, you often only get one or two attacks in before its there turn again.  It creates a really slow pace, which again isn't bad except...

 

Gank Squads and Polar Ice Caps

 

One of the interesting combat experiences in DS1 was fighting multiple enemies at once using the combat system.  Dark Souls 2 looks to be designed around that experience.  There are Sooooo many enemies in every location and all of them are very close together and there aggro range is enormous.  Take Iron Keep as an example there are 3 rooms between the bonfire and the first boss of the Iron Keep.  In those three rooms you will face 17 enemies by my count with another 2 in the room that you can ignore if you don't go the end of the platform.  The combat system is not designed to face so many enemies at once, so what does that mean, well you can either try to run past everything or you can slowly pick off enemies from range using a bow or something similar.  The former will get you killed a lot and the latter is extremely boring when you have to do it multiple times when you inevitably die to the boss.  I'm not just cherry picking one scenario either.  There are 15 or so in lost bastille between you and the ruined sentinels (3 rooms).  There are 10 or so between the bonfire and the dragonrider, and that's just one room (though if you die to dragon rider you kind of deserve it)  you get the idea.  It makes the pace of play very slow and leaves you wanting to just get it over with, rather than having fun. 

 

Estus Sucks and the Other New Items Do Too (just in a different way)

 

Before I even get started, bonfire ascetic is pretty neat.  Alright, I get estus needed a little bit of a nerf.  By the time you get the rite of kindling, you can have up to 20 estus at a given bonfire which I admit is a little bit excessive and to be honest I think the 12 maximum in DS2 is reasonable amount. So why does it suck well for one, I imagine most people aren't going to get 12 estus on there first playthrough and most of the shards are pretty well hidden.  Starting off with one is just weird.  They also obsolete it immediately.  In the very first area, near a bonfire that everyone is going to find is melentia who will sell you infinite life gems. Which for one is safer than estus and for two allows you 99 heals.  That's ridiculous.  I know its a bit much to complain that the game should be harder, but come on, at least move her later into the game or make it cost more.  Life Gems are too good, couple that with the need to go our of your way to make estus even remotely comparable and I don't know why I would even bother if I decided to play DS2 again.  Another issue I had where the fragrant branches of yore.  These are a rare consumable that allows you to depetrify npcs and enemies that generally unlock different areas that lead to good items.  The problem is that sometimes they do not do this leading to wasting consumables and this can lock you out of several pathways until you manage to track down another one.  For example, the easiest one to find is sold my the aforementioned Melentia for 12000 souls.  Now for some odd reason there's a petrified enemy in the tutorial area that some players are going to remember and be like "Oh I can get to that locked area now" only to be rewarded with nothing.  So they wander out and find that they cant go to shaded woods because they wasted there branch.  The next most likely place someone is to find one is in the Lords chambers, which you needed one to get into to start with and you get the idea of how this could lead to a lot of frustration.  Not a softlock, but certainly not a great item.  Human Effigies are also wack.  I get the lore implication of going hollow, but it just seems antithetical in terms of game design.  How do you punish your player for dying? well besides sending them back to do the area over again, you make it easier for them to die this time!  well how do they get there HP back? an uncommon consumable that you can't buy easily.  It feels like there should be a bonus for being human rather than a penalty for not, but thats just me.

 

So Comic, you've complained a lot, why did you say you had a good time?

 

Well, at the end of the day the game is still dark souls.  I don't really know how to explain it, but there is still this sense of accomplishment for learning and understanding the boss patterns and finally overcoming the challenge after a lot of retries.  The atmosphere and lore is as rich as ever and while it certainly isn't an Artistic Magnum Opus like the original, its still a good experience to get through.  Praise the sun and I'll see yall for DS3 eventually

 

 

 

 

[Copanele]

On 1/23/2023 at 6:53 PM, Together_Comic said:

Platinum #70

Dark Souls 2

Oh man, the "LEVEL ADP" souls  this is the textbook "a fantastic game, but a not-so-great-Souls game" .

Ironically, Dark Souls 2 ended up being my most played Souls game of them all, just because of how bonkers it is!

On 1/23/2023 at 6:53 PM, Together_Comic said:

 

I don't often play a sequel right after the first game, but Dark Souls made such an impression on me that I thought to make an exception.  Without all the hemming and hawing I'm going to go ahead and say that this one is worse, like a lot worse than the first one.  That said, the same is true for somewhere between 50-60% of the games on my account, and I did have a good time with the game, there where just some creative choices that where made, that ended up not being to my liking. 

 

Warping without a Lord Vessel

 

One of the things about DS1 that made it so interesting was that when you went off exploring into the world unknown, you where in it for the long hall.  If you descended down into blighttown to take care of quelog and ring the second bell, you where committed.  If you wanted out, you had to climb all the way back out of the pit.  It made for an immersive experience where exploring the dangers really felt well dangerous.  If you ran out of purple moss in the swamp, you where just going to have to deal with the poison, Siegmeir style.  That or climb all the way back out.  Warping was out of the question.  That means that the level design by necessity had to be meticulously planned and creatively designed to make or the game was going to be an absolute chore.  About half way through, when it came time to explore some of the more remote areas, the game gave the ability to warp, but only to certain bonfires. It worked out to make a dynamic experience where simple travel was never super frustrating.  In Dark Souls 2, warping is enabled from the start to and from any bonfire you have rested at.  This means that the world ends up looking more like a hub and spokes style, which while not bad in and of itself definitely is a downgrade from the artistic expression DS had.  The world is no longer interestingly connected, its just a lot of lines.  You go Medula --> Forest of Giants --> lost bastille --> sinner's rise  or you can do heide's --> huntsman copse --> harvest valley --> earthen peak --> iron keep or etc. You all get the idea.  There is some divergence, for example shaded woods leads to bright stone cove, drangleic castle, and Aldia's keep, but the moments there are few and far between.  I get it though.  It doesn't make a lot of sense to spend a lot of time meticulously planning when the warp can simply take you back to where you need to be.  It did also let them remove leveling up from every bonfire and instead ask you to go back to Medula.  This was more annoying than anything as it meant having to look at two extra loading screens anytime you needed to spend your souls.  On the whole, I didn't like the change very much.  It made the world design feel linear and not as interesting.

 

I think that the warping from the get-go has been a good gameplay mechanic but also a downgrade in terms of story. If anything, I think the weirdest problem with this game is how the game is laid out in terms of levels (going from Harvest valley elevator up in...Iron Keep?Huh?) 

DS2 was way more game-y in this aspect. Although, I can respect the fact that the bonfires were still distanced (wait until you get to Dark Souls 3, they cover you in bonfires  )

On 1/23/2023 at 6:53 PM, Together_Comic said:

The See Me Rolling, They Hatin'

 

People who have played dark souls one know that the roll is one of the most powerful tools you have in getting through the game.  It seems like DS2 wanted to nerf it a little bit so they tied the number of invincibility frames your roll gives you to your agility score.  In DS1 your roll gives you on average 11 frames of invincibility and the game runs at 30 frames per second so about a third of a second of invulnerability.  In dark souls 2, in order to get the same amount (approximately) you need an agility score of 100.  There are several stats that effect agility but the one that does it to any real degree is adaptability (adp), and I'm going to go out on a limit here an say that adp is a mistake.  To get the desired agility score, you would need 25 points in adaptability that's about a third of your levels for an average playthrough.  Theoretically that's okay.  Just like damaging stats, health, and stamina, you can just slowly improve it over the course of the run.  The problem is that some players may not level adaptability and if they do, it may not be the first thing that they go to improve.   Stacked on top of that is that the world branches off into 4ish distinct paths and each path (mostly anyway) is available right from the beginning of the game.  And whether people like it or not, the difficulty of the game is one of the things that makes Dark Souls games, Dark Souls.  What does all this mean? Well when designing enemies and boss fights, the devs have to assume that you will have a certain amount of adp. This leads to crazy tracking and awful hitboxes that make it looks like the game is just bullshit instead of understanding what the player did wrong. 

 

This ADP stat is the reason I mock DS2 and say "this game is bonkers". ADP influencing rolling is one thing, but somehow it also influences your estus drinking speed. Why they linked that to the estus gulping...no idea.

At least you have healing gems, making Estus obsolete  

On 1/23/2023 at 6:53 PM, Together_Comic said:

Dark Souls 2 has Turn Based Combat.

 

Damn...that's really a good one. 

Well I played with a DEX build and had no major issues (because powerstancing rapiers trivializes this game), but I did try to play as a pure STR build once. ONCE. 

Yeah, you said it right, i shall attack only when it's my turn to do so. I add one extra attack - I eat a fat sword to the face.

At least magic is still broken in this game  

On 1/23/2023 at 6:53 PM, Together_Comic said:

Gank Squads and Polar Ice Caps

 

One of the interesting combat experiences in DS1 was fighting multiple enemies at once using the combat system.  Dark Souls 2 looks to be designed around that experience.  There are Sooooo many enemies in every location and all of them are very close together and there aggro range is enormous.  Take Iron Keep as an example there are 3 rooms between the bonfire and the first boss of the Iron Keep.  In those three rooms you will face 17 enemies by my count with another 2 in the room that you can ignore if you don't go the end of the platform.  The combat system is not designed to face so many enemies at once, so what does that mean, well you can either try to run past everything or you can slowly pick off enemies from range using a bow or something similar.  The former will get you killed a lot and the latter is extremely boring when you have to do it multiple times when you inevitably die to the boss.  I'm not just cherry picking one scenario either.  There are 15 or so in lost bastille between you and the ruined sentinels (3 rooms).  There are 10 or so between the bonfire and the dragonrider, and that's just one room (though if you die to dragon rider you kind of deserve it)  you get the idea.  It makes the pace of play very slow and leaves you wanting to just get it over with, rather than having fun. 

And this is doubled/tripled in the DLC! including bosses!!

There's so many enemies (in Shulva especially)..

On 1/23/2023 at 6:53 PM, Together_Comic said:

Estus Sucks and the Other New Items Do Too (just in a different way)

 

Before I even get started, bonfire ascetic is pretty neat.  Alright, I get estus needed a little bit of a nerf.  By the time you get the rite of kindling, you can have up to 20 estus at a given bonfire which I admit is a little bit excessive and to be honest I think the 12 maximum in DS2 is reasonable amount. So why does it suck well for one, I imagine most people aren't going to get 12 estus on there first playthrough and most of the shards are pretty well hidden.  Starting off with one is just weird.  They also obsolete it immediately.  In the very first area, near a bonfire that everyone is going to find is melentia who will sell you infinite life gems. Which for one is safer than estus and for two allows you 99 heals.  That's ridiculous.  I know its a bit much to complain that the game should be harder, but come on, at least move her later into the game or make it cost more.  Life Gems are too good, couple that with the need to go our of your way to make estus even remotely comparable and I don't know why I would even bother if I decided to play DS2 again.  Another issue I had where the fragrant branches of yore.  These are a rare consumable that allows you to depetrify npcs and enemies that generally unlock different areas that lead to good items.  The problem is that sometimes they do not do this leading to wasting consumables and this can lock you out of several pathways until you manage to track down another one.  For example, the easiest one to find is sold my the aforementioned Melentia for 12000 souls.  Now for some odd reason there's a petrified enemy in the tutorial area that some players are going to remember and be like "Oh I can get to that locked area now" only to be rewarded with nothing.  So they wander out and find that they cant go to shaded woods because they wasted there branch.  The next most likely place someone is to find one is in the Lords chambers, which you needed one to get into to start with and you get the idea of how this could lead to a lot of frustration.  Not a softlock, but certainly not a great item.  Human Effigies are also wack.  I get the lore implication of going hollow, but it just seems antithetical in terms of game design.  How do you punish your player for dying? well besides sending them back to do the area over again, you make it easier for them to die this time!  well how do they get there HP back? an uncommon consumable that you can't buy easily.  It feels like there should be a bonus for being human rather than a penalty for not, but thats just me.

 

Yep, again agreed  Branches of Yore sucked, the lifegems made everything mad easy, the Human Effigies should have remained in Demon Souls (stone of Ephemeral Eyes crap).

Glad they removed all this stuff from the next entries, but unfortunately they also removed Bonfire Ascetics which were really REALLY cool. I would've wished they added Bonfire Ascetics just so I can fight a NG+7 boss in DS3 without ACTUALLY replaying the entire game.

 

On 1/23/2023 at 6:53 PM, Together_Comic said:

So Comic, you've complained a lot, why did you say you had a good time?

 

Well, at the end of the day the game is still dark souls.  I don't really know how to explain it, but there is still this sense of accomplishment for learning and understanding the boss patterns and finally overcoming the challenge after a lot of retries.  The atmosphere and lore is as rich as ever and while it certainly isn't an Artistic Magnum Opus like the original, its still a good experience to get through.  Praise the sun and I'll see yall for DS3 eventually

 

 

 

 

Yep...game is still VERY good, its just fun to dunk on it  

Congrats, glad you liked the game! Can't wait to see your DS3 experience :> (do play the DLC, even if it has no trophies! that's where the best part is!)

[Together_Comic]

20 hours ago, Copanele said:

Congrats, glad you liked the game! Can't wait to see your DS3 experience :> (do play the DLC, even if it has no trophies! that's where the best part is!)

 

I have been playing the DLCs (especially since they've been included for free) and will likely do so for DS3.  I will say one thing about the DLCs, they are obtuse as hell to find though.  Especially DS1.  It's really easy to miss that pendant on that random crystal golem in Sen's Archive.  My quick thoughts on them.

 

DS1:  Easily the most memorable of the DLCs for the 2 games that I have played in the series.  Oolacile is a great location and its interesting to go back and see what happened with one of the major lore figures in the game in Knight Artorious.  I was a bit disappointed that he was a sham, and it was actually you who pushed back the abyss in the tale, but what was not disappointing where the boss fights.  Knight Artorious himself is one of the first true sword duels with no other gimmick, just you, your weapon, and the dodge roll button against a highly aggressive, combo happy boss.  Really enjoyable.  Kalameet is memorable to say the least, shooting him out of the air is one of the cooler moments in the game (is that the same giant from DS3 that hurls spears at the dude's by the white trees?)  The boss fight itself is good and of the 2.5 dragon bosses in DS1 definitely the best of those three.  Manus is just pure DS.  A huge aggressive boss with an interesting gimmick and hard as nails? Sign me up!  On the whole, a memorable and complete experience, and if it weren't included I wouldn't have even felt bad about buying it. 

 

DS2:  I'll say this for the DS2 DLCs, they are probably the best part of the game.  The bosses are memorable (unlike most of the base game IMO) and the level design peaks here.  They do spam the enemies though.

 

Crown of the Sunken King:  This has a really interesting buildings raising up and falling mechanic which gives us a nice puzzle mechanic. The bosses of this one are also neat.  Elana scared the heck out of me when she summoned a whole Velstat.  I quickly learned that leaving the skeletons would NOT stop her from summoning (in fact, it made Velstat basically guaranteed.) Sinh is a good dragon boss, unlike ancient dragon (Why can DS only do good dragons in a dlc?).

 

Crown of the Iron King:  This level is awesome for lore.  Climbing through the towers is one of those moments where everything is sad, but full of beauty.  The enemies here are over the top again, as I've come to expect from DS2, but what can you do? Blue Smelter Demon was also a let down, but the other 2 bosses are great.  Fume Knight is the best boss in the game easily and goes toe to toe with some of the other great bosses in the series.  Alonne is also fun, but the boss run is so awful that it basically ruined it for me.  What do you remember Old Iron King?  "Alonne Knights!  Alonne Knights and Salamander's everywhere!" 

 

Crown of the Ivory King:  Lore wise this one is my favorite, design wise it was poorly implemented.  A land Frozen in time, with a voice telling you to turn back.  You proceed anyway, and best the King's Pet (mediocre boss), and prove that you have what it takes to defeat the king.  So the voice thaws the city for you.  You go gather the squad to help you (I wish they were in more memorable locations) and you and the squad drop down to face the Ivory King and his minions.  Ivory king is a great fight, I wish he didn't get an extra summon if your guys survive, seems like punishing me for playing well, but oh well.  Just a lot of little things that take away from an otherwise excellent area.  Then there's the snow field and those unicorn F*****.  F*** that place and for what, another fight with the first mediocre boss, but this time two of them?  Eh. Pass on it going forward.

 

Also there's this:

 

Platinum #71

Madden NFL 2022

 

To be honest, I don't really have a lot to say about this ~4 hour platinum (even less if you know what to do to start with), so instead how about a brief rant.  I ended up with Madden 22 as a part of my Christmas shopping for the year.  The local used game store (shout out to Game Corner) had a buy 2 get one free deal going on.  I was already buying 2 games for others, so I picked up this one as a tack on, on the back of a brief bit of nostalgia.  The last time I played a Madden (for more than perhaps one or two games against a buddy in college) was in 2006.  Madden 22 is almost the exact same game as the one I played in 2006.  In 18 years, they have not innovated at all!  On top of that, this game is 55gb? WTF are yall using that space for.  Gamecube did that s*** for less that 1.6 GB.  I understand you got some new graphics and some cutscenes for career mode, but damn.  Get your s*** together EA.  I probably won't bother with another Madden, because if history has anything to show, its that the game will be effectively the same.  

 

 

[Joe Dubz]

I hafta say man, I've enjoyed reading your breakdowns of these DS games! Sounds pretty accurate from what I remember... For the first one anyway. Never even touched the 2nd one! I also wanna give you props because... Fuck man, those games are tough! Pure examples of how rarity /= difficulty, which I found out the hard way initially lol. As many hard games as I've done, I still have yet to pop any From Software plats... Shame shame!! 

 

At any rate, enjoyed reading and it looks like you're already stomping your way through the 3rd iteration... Get it my friend ? Looking forward to your next write-up!

 

I also found it interesting how quickly you breezed through Madden '22!! Man I thought I remembered the older ones' plats being such doozies to grab. Congrats!!

[Copanele]

17 hours ago, Together_Comic said:

 

I have been playing the DLCs (especially since they've been included for free) and will likely do so for DS3.  I will say one thing about the DLCs, they are obtuse as hell to find though.  Especially DS1.  It's really easy to miss that pendant on that random crystal golem in Sen's Archive.  My quick thoughts on them.

Oh yeah...the DS1 DLC was a PAIN to find! Jesus.

I know Miyazaki intentionally made it so we can ask for help online but WHAT THE HELL! Why do I need a degree to find the extra content?

17 hours ago, Together_Comic said:

DS1:  Easily the most memorable of the DLCs for the 2 games that I have played in the series.  Oolacile is a great location and its interesting to go back and see what happened with one of the major lore figures in the game in Knight Artorious.  I was a bit disappointed that he was a sham, and it was actually you who pushed back the abyss in the tale, but what was not disappointing where the boss fights.  Knight Artorious himself is one of the first true sword duels with no other gimmick, just you, your weapon, and the dodge roll button against a highly aggressive, combo happy boss.  Really enjoyable.  Kalameet is memorable to say the least, shooting him out of the air is one of the cooler moments in the game (is that the same giant from DS3 that hurls spears at the dude's by the white trees?)  The boss fight itself is good and of the 2.5 dragon bosses in DS1 definitely the best of those three.  Manus is just pure DS.  A huge aggressive boss with an interesting gimmick and hard as nails? Sign me up!  On the whole, a memorable and complete experience, and if it weren't included I wouldn't have even felt bad about buying it. 

Artorias of the Abyss is truly the best DLC between DS1 and DS2 (wait until you get to Bloodborne :> )

All the bosses are fantastic. What was interesting is when facing Artorias, he completely whooped my ass the first time I fought him....then I saw that he was almost fully corrupted by the Abyss, without his greatshield AND with his dominant arm broken.

I dared not imagine what the fight would be if he was at full power  

17 hours ago, Together_Comic said:

DS2:  I'll say this for the DS2 DLCs, they are probably the best part of the game.  The bosses are memorable (unlike most of the base game IMO) and the level design peaks here.  They do spam the enemies though.

 

Crown of the Sunken King:  This has a really interesting buildings raising up and falling mechanic which gives us a nice puzzle mechanic. The bosses of this one are also neat.  Elana scared the heck out of me when she summoned a whole Velstat.  I quickly learned that leaving the skeletons would NOT stop her from summoning (in fact, it made Velstat basically guaranteed.) Sinh is a good dragon boss, unlike ancient dragon (Why can DS only do good dragons in a dlc?).

This DLC was great except for one section - the gank squad boss...where you have to run in a dungeon full of petrifying lizards and then fight...3 NPCs. I legit did not understand what was the purpose of that place  

Ah well at least I get a slab or something.

Elana popping Vestadt was both scary and...abit confusing. Velstadt himself was the roadblock for the fight, Elana always had the bad habit of spamming flame swathes while Velstadt was bonking.

Also be glad you fought Sinh in Scholar edition  In original DS2 his skin has the same rot effect that the pool in Aldia's Keep does - it breaks your weapon almost instantly. If you don't equip weapon durability rings or have magic on you, Sinh would be a goddamn catastrophe of a boss.

Also mandatory screw Ancient Dragon!

17 hours ago, Together_Comic said:

Crown of the Iron King:  This level is awesome for lore.  Climbing through the towers is one of those moments where everything is sad, but full of beauty.  The enemies here are over the top again, as I've come to expect from DS2, but what can you do? Blue Smelter Demon was also a let down, but the other 2 bosses are great.  Fume Knight is the best boss in the game easily and goes toe to toe with some of the other great bosses in the series.  Alonne is also fun, but the boss run is so awful that it basically ruined it for me.  What do you remember Old Iron King?  "Alonne Knights!  Alonne Knights and Salamander's everywhere!" 

Pretty much my favorite DLC, but DAMN it was a tough one! Fume Knight was the absolute best boss in the game, but the others...I mean yeah, Sir Alonne was fantastic (and the lore implication that you actually killed him instead of him leaving the Iron Keep, same as Artorias DLC), but the run towards him....ugh. 

17 hours ago, Together_Comic said:

Crown of the Ivory King:  Lore wise this one is my favorite, design wise it was poorly implemented.  A land Frozen in time, with a voice telling you to turn back.  You proceed anyway, and best the King's Pet (mediocre boss), and prove that you have what it takes to defeat the king.  So the voice thaws the city for you.  You go gather the squad to help you (I wish they were in more memorable locations) and you and the squad drop down to face the Ivory King and his minions.  Ivory king is a great fight, I wish he didn't get an extra summon if your guys survive, seems like punishing me for playing well, but oh well.  Just a lot of little things that take away from an otherwise excellent area.  Then there's the snow field and those unicorn F*****.  F*** that place and for what, another fight with the first mediocre boss, but this time two of them?  Eh. Pass on it going forward.

The best part? You will never find a more awful area in any other Souls game. NOTHING beats the Unicorn Fucks in Frozen Outskirts.

The cat enraging mechanic was fun...but that's another reskinned boss with even less health. 

At least Ivory King was cool (although he's a nightmare to fight at SL1 - don't ask  )

 

 

Loved reading the DLC impressions, you really enjoyed your time with these games  again, can't wait to see the next writeup!

17 hours ago, Together_Comic said:

Also there's this:

 

Platinum #71

Madden NFL 2022

Also congrats for this EA failure  

[Together_Comic]

5 hours ago, Copanele said:

This DLC was great except for one section - the gank squad boss...where you have to run in a dungeon full of petrifying lizards and then fight...3 NPCs. I legit did not understand what was the purpose of that place  

Ah well at least I get a slab or something.

Elana popping Vestadt was both scary and...abit confusing. Velstadt himself was the roadblock for the fight, Elana always had the bad habit of spamming flame swathes while Velstadt was bonking.

Also be glad you fought Sinh in Scholar edition  In original DS2 his skin has the same rot effect that the pool in Aldia's Keep does - it breaks your weapon almost instantly. If you don't equip weapon durability rings or have magic on you, Sinh would be a goddamn catastrophe of a boss.

Also mandatory screw Ancient Dragon!

 

I had basically put that gank squad out of my memory, I remember running around and just kiting them.   Sinh having rot would have been awful.  I feel like weapon durability was close to being perfect in DS2.  Maybe just a tad overtuned.  Enough to make you care about it, but not breaking every 5 seconds.  I remember having to spend a lot of souls for that pool in aldia's since I forgot to take off my rings and it broke all of them ?. 

 

6 hours ago, Copanele said:

The best part? You will never find a more awful area in any other Souls game. NOTHING beats the Unicorn Fucks in Frozen Outskirts.

The cat enraging mechanic was fun...but that's another reskinned boss with even less health. 

At least Ivory King was cool (although he's a nightmare to fight at SL1 - don't ask  )

 

 

Loved reading the DLC impressions, you really enjoyed your time with these games  again, can't wait to see the next writeup!

 

Well at least that's as bad as it gets, lol.  I'm glad you're enjoying them.

 

19 hours ago, Joe Dubz said:

I hafta say man, I've enjoyed reading your breakdowns of these DS games! Sounds pretty accurate from what I remember... For the first one anyway. Never even touched the 2nd one! I also wanna give you props because... Fuck man, those games are tough! Pure examples of how rarity /= difficulty, which I found out the hard way initially lol. As many hard games as I've done, I still have yet to pop any From Software plats... Shame shame!! 

 

At any rate, enjoyed reading and it looks like you're already stomping your way through the 3rd iteration... Get it my friend  Looking forward to your next write-up!

 

I also found it interesting how quickly you breezed through Madden '22!! Man I thought I remembered the older ones' plats being such doozies to grab. Congrats!!

 

Lol Thanks for that.  I'm glad you're enjoying them.  I will say that if you can do trials, meatboy, and god forbid crypt of the necrodancer, you can definitely do souls.  Its more about having the patience than anything else and you seem to have that in spades! ?

 

Yeah I did glance at the trophy guide from that other trophy website before I picked it up.  I don't normally let those dictate what games I play, but I definitely didn't want to spend 500 hours on madden of all things.  The guide there says 20 hours (and I imagine half of that is waiting for the game to install and watching all the load screens), so its was pretty quick.  Frankly I'm shocked that its UR.

[Together_Comic]

Update 38

100% #11:  Wheel of Fortune.

 

Girlfriend_Comic strikes again with a party game for date night.  We spent Saturday night playing this one and then I played a little Sunday for some clean up.  If you haven't seen wheel of fortune before, a player will spin the wheel for a dollar value then guess a letter in a word or phrase.  If they guess correctly the dollar amount they rolled is added to their score, if they miss its the next player's turn.  The player that solves the puzzle then banks their total for the round, and a new puzzle is revealed.  However, on the wheel are several bankrupt tiles which if you roll them empties your banked money for the turn.  I don't know if I'm just remembering wrong, but I feel like we rolled bankrupt Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to frequently.  Like every third spin frequently. This in particular reminded me why we rarely bust out the N64 for Mario Party, that is to say that the randomness makes Girlfriend_Comic very angry ?.  All in all a good way to spend an evening.  I'd recommend it if you're looking for a few hours of entertainment, not as much if you wanted something substantial.

 

~TC

[Together_Comic]

Update 39

 

Platinum 72 - Tetris Effect.

 

Call me Ishmael.

 

Tetris has long been one of my favorite video games of all time.  Across all versions of the series I've probably played for somewhere around 1500 hours in the series and its been around in some form or fashion since my grandfather introduced it to me in 1997 on the NES (yes I'm old, shut up.).  It was the only game I could consistently get him to play with me.  I then went on to play it on the gameboy, Tetris the Grandmaster, Tetris Friends on the website by the time the internet was ubiquitous, so when I saw that Tetris Effect was being released with trophies I was excited.  I started Tetris Effect in February 2019, a couple months after it released and fell in love again. 

 

For those who do not know (I'm sure there are a couple of you, maybe even a whole 1 or 2 people!), Tetris is a puzzle game where by you stack blocks on a grid.  Whenever you completely fill a line of the grid, the line disappears from the board.  The most you can clear at a time (usually) is 4 which will earn you the eponymous tetris.  While Tetris Effect has traditional Tetris, it has a mode called journey which explores the main gimmick of the game "the zone".  Whenever you clear lines in this mode you will build up a meter.  When you fill a certain portion of the meter you can enter the zone, (obviously the more meter you have the longer it lasts)  which will stop the automatic drop of the pieces and allow you to clear lines additively for as long as you remain in the zone.  This makes it possible to clear more than 4 lines at a time, so you could end up with a dodecatris for 12 or a perfectrist for 18.  The cool thing is, unlike most gimmicks, it doesn't intrude on the core gameplay.  Its there if you want it, but you can play perfectly fine without it. From here, you play through levels of increasing difficulty as you complete the journey. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the music,  which is a) great, and b). makes for a unique and captivating experience.  TE is also VR compatible and if you have the set, I'd also recommend playing the game there for awhile as it is certainly a journey. 

 

The other main mode of the game is Effect Mode.  This mode contains a bunch of different styles of Tetris that you can play.  It has the traditional stuff like Marathon, Sprint, or Ultra, but it also has some weirder modes like All Clear which is a more puzzle like mode where you have a limited number of blocks to perfectly clear all the lines, a mode where random things will happen (i.e. your board is flipped upside down, or your pieces turn gold), or even a relax mode where you have no timer or other distractions and the mode just continues and plays good music while you zone out  and just play.  The game even introduces a "weekly ritual" which encourages everyone to play a certain kind of game during the weekend.  Completing a game gets you an avatar which can be seen floating around the world during the rituals. 

 

I played the game religiously for nearly 3 weeks completing the game and having a good time, until then something happened that I did not expect, I bumped into a brick wall in the Ultra and Sprint modes.  I just wasn't fast enough to get anywhere near the times needed I had a 24K score in ultra and a 1:35 best time in sprint.  I wasn't going anywhere near this platinum for awhile.  Thus it was relegated to the back of my mind and I moved on to other games, occasionally coming back to this one and playing for awhile.  In June, I managed a 27K score in ultra and a 1:28 time in sprint and was over the moon about it. I recognized that it could be done, I just needed to practice.  Thus, 2019 became 2020 and then 2021 when covid struck and I managed to knock out Ultra by learning to T-spin, and got the sprint time down to a 1:20, and then by the end of the year a 1:18.  Then 2022 rolled around and I signed up for both Ultra Rare Clean Up and Platinum difficulty challenge, both of which had Tetris Effect on the list.  I was determined to get it done.  By April I had the time down to a 1:14, and then In june I got it down to a 1:12 while having completed the sub 1:10 online.  By September I had gotten it to a 1:11, but then I hit a plateau.  I couldn't seem to get past that last barrier.  I probably have 20 hours of gameplay from this point that where just me trying to catch that blasted white whale. Well the year passed, and I see that resident science expert @DrBloodmoney gets the platinum and posts videos of his attempt in one of the forums.  I notice he is doing 6-2 stacking rather than my rather traditional and outdated 7-1 stacking.  I figure that it can't hurt to try it, and start to learn it.  I starts as a massive setback my times go from a 1:15 average to somewhere in the 1:20s, but over time as I get used to it I notice that I'm getting faster and my average time is plummeting.  Eventually I hit my first 1:10:XX, which of course lit a fire in me.  At this point I was playing about an hour a day before bed just to see if I could get there and had accumulated multiple 1:10:XX times including a 1:10:14, a 1:10:07, a 1:10:06 and a 1:10:03 until finally.  The Pequod caught up and we demolished the time with a 1:07:87.  I had finally speared that white whale and platinumed a game that I had spend years trying to finish. 

 

My estimate for how long I spend on this platinum is somewhere in the 400hr mark, though I will say that quite a bit of that is casual play, where I wasn't actively trying to get the platinum.  Another chunk of that time was dedicated to rotating the tetriminos for that one dumb trophy and I'll likely spend quite a bit more time in the game just relaxing with some classic tetris.  This is one of those games that reminded me of why I like getting the platinum.  That experience of the falling truely and deeply in love with a game, then the chase for the most challenging aspects the game has to offer, and finally the thrill of achieving that long sought after goal.  The platinum that creates a story, that you will remember every time you look at the trophy list. 

 

[DrBloodmoney]

6 minutes ago, Together_Comic said:

I hit a plateau.  I couldn't seem to get past that last barrier.  I probably have 20 hours of gameplay from this point that where just me trying to catch that blasted white whale. Well the year passed, and I see that resident science expert @DrBloodmoney gets the platinum and posts videos of his attempt in one of the forums.  I notice he is doing 6-2 stacking rather than my rather traditional and outdated 7-1 stacking.  I figure that it can't hurt to try it, and start to learn it. 

 

 

Awesome work man!!

 

 

 

 

I'm super glad to be a catalyst for you pushing through - feel like I'm paying it forward, as my experience was exactly the same - only the person who's Sprint method I was looking at was resident speed-master @gamer_darkly - it's really his Sprint Stack that I was looking at, so there's some ace Tetris-Trickle-Down-Economics happening here!

 

 

Massive congrats though bud - 1:07:87 is outstanding - I only managed to trip over the finish line with a 1:09:Something.... but you blasted past it with some seconds to spare!

 

...and... from what I understand...  just in time for the PS5 version releasing tomorrow ?

[gamer_darkly]

I think the sprint stack has to go down as a community effort as I saw a couple of other people using the same method. As for the title speed-master, I like it, but I came in at 1:09 as well ?

 

1:07:87 is an excellent time! Well done on the platinum.

[Joe Dubz]

Holy shit dude, a very hearty congratulations to you here!! I know you've mentioned it once or twice maybe in a status update? I'm no Tetris expert... But from what I've heard the good DrB, yourself, and others describe... I'm staying far the hell away from this one ?

 

Very happy for you bud! And a Most Wanted target to boot. Looks good on you my friend!!