Grotz99 Posted December 16, 2020 Author Share Posted December 16, 2020 (edited) 20 minutes ago, Rally-Vincent--- said: So you left out the best game? How was Alien: Isolation? Did you like it? Absolutely enjoyed Alien Isolation, I think I talked about it in a post a further up after I finished up some easier games and wanted to talk about that and RE7. I'll platinum both some day, but was kind of sad when I screwed up the killing no human trophy in Alien Isolation, but the next run will be on easy. It was the right amount of creepy and it went from feeling like you are in the first Alien movie right into the 2nd, some parts reminded me of that part in Jurassic Park when the raptors are hunting them. "Clever Girl"....I swear I still hear rumbling in the vents... The only thing I didn't like, but made the game more manageable, was how OP the flamethrower is. I'm glad I got it as it was perfect for my October games. Next I will be going back through on easy following a guide to grab all the collectables and try not to die once. I heard that trophy is tricky, but you can restart the level if you do die. I wish they let you save the collectables and then you can go back to pick up what you're missing. I'm really not a fan of following a guide to the T to make sure I get everything each level. Also, those damn face huggers coming out of nowhere, going to be a nightmare on the no death run. Edited December 16, 2020 by Grotz99 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted December 17, 2020 Author Share Posted December 17, 2020 (edited) Decided to make a list of 50 games from my massive backlog, that will no doubt change, to aim to play in 2021. There is no way I'm going to get to all of these, but I figured I would look for some feedback as to what to prioritize. Most of these I will attempt to go for the platinum, but if they are simply not fun, I might fall short on the platinum for them. This list is either comprised of games I barely started in the past and they sit at a low percent on my account already or are games I haven't started yet. It doesn't include many short/smaller games, but I will no doubt pepper some in as time goes on. The hours are from https://howlongtobeat.com/ for completionist, so they might be a little off, but gives an overall idea of how long these games can be if going for the platinum/100%. I was thinking of trying to knock some of my lower graded games up to at least an A (S if the platinum is in sight and the game is fun) as well when I feel like clearing up my unearned, but this list of games I actually want to play is pretty daunting, so we'll see how that goes. I do still have some I aim to finish up as well (KH2, RE7, Alien Isolation, etc) along with what I'm currently playing (Danganronpa 2, Hand of Fate 2, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor). These are the ones I plan to play for sure from that list: Assassins Creed Odyssey - I play one AC game a year and this is the next one (also have the DLC already) Dragon Ball Z Kakarot - Already had a hard enough time choosing between Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and this before the end of the year Far Cry Primal - One of my oldest titles in this list, this year needs to be the year I actually play it Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep - Really need to get moving on finishing this series The Banner Saga - Need to get this started Yakuza 3 - Have to keep my Yakuza going Title Platform Hours Status Assassins Creed Odyssey PS4 132 New Batman Arkham Origins PS3 40 Revisit Beyond Two Souls PS4 27 New Chaos on Deponia PS4 12 New Crash Bandicoot PS4 18 Revisit Danganronpa 3 PS4 91 New Dark Souls PS3 106 Revisit Dark Souls 3 PS4 92 Revisit Demon Souls PS3 80 Revisit Deponia Doomsday PS4 14 New Dishonored 2 PS4 44 New Dragon Age: Inquisition PS4 100 Revisit Dragon Ball Z Kakarot PS4 53 New Everspace PS4 66 Revisit Far Cry 4 PS4 45 New Far Cry Primal PS4 36 New Get Even PS4 16 New Gravity Rush 2 PS4 55 New Hidden Agenda PS4 12 Revisit Judgement PS4 96 New Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep PS4 96 New LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens PS4 31 New Mafia 3 PS4 44 Revisit Metro: 2033 Redux PS4 22 New Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden PS4 22 New Need for Speed Rivals PS4 32 Revisit Nioh PS4 94 New One Piece Unlimited World PS4 64 New Phantom Doctrine PS4 50+ New Puppeteer PS3 21 Revisit Resident Evil PS4 28 New Shadow of Colossus PS4 24 New Slay the Spire PS4 230 New Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness PS4 106 Revisit State of Mind PS4 12 New The Banner Saga PS4 27 New The Banner Saga 2 PS4 23 New The Golf Club PS4 34 Revisit The Pillars of the Earth PS4 16 New The Witcher 3 PS4 173 Revisit Tokyo Xanadu eX+ PS4 82 New Torment: Tides of Numenera PS4 48 Revisit Titanfall 2 PS4 14 New Uncharted 3 PS3 20 Revisit Valkyria Chronicles PS4 52 New Vampyr PS4 41 New World of Final Fantasy PS4 82 New Yakuza 3 PS4 107 New Yakuza 4 PS4 99 New Yakuza Like A Dragon PS5 89 New Total Hours 2868 That's a lot of hours if I was to try to tackle all of these, almost 8 a day everyday of the year. Hopefully I can stick to this list and minimize spending this year, except for the PS5 of course, whenever that is available... Edited December 17, 2020 by Grotz99 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rally-Vincent--- Posted December 17, 2020 Share Posted December 17, 2020 I played 14 games from that list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted December 17, 2020 Author Share Posted December 17, 2020 6 minutes ago, Rally-Vincent--- said: I played 14 games from that list. Any thoughts about which of those 14 I should tackle? I also saw that you played Phantom Doctrine that I can't seem to find much on, which is why it is set 50+ hours. It looked like an XCOM style game, which is why I picked up on sale this past year. What did you think of that game? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rally-Vincent--- Posted December 17, 2020 Share Posted December 17, 2020 Just now, Grotz99 said: Any thoughts about which of those 14 I should tackle? I also saw that you played Phantom Doctrine that I can't seem to find much on, which is why it is set 50+ hours. It looked like an XCOM style game, which is why I picked up on sale this past year. What did you think of that game? Definitely the Banner Saga games (where is the third game in your list?),The Witcher 3, and Vakyria Chronicles. Torment: Tides of Numenera is a great game, but it is a lot of reading. A LOT. Play it when you have some time, if only to remember what's happening. Phantom Doctrine is an average game in an interesting Cold War spy setting. Its greatest weakpoint is that there is much less mission variety than in XCOM, and you can easily break it with certain agent abilities. I honestly can't remember how long to plat it is. You have to make at least two playthroughs plus start a third. 50 hours sound all right. I enjoyed it, as I do with most games with tactical turn based combat. It has one very neat feature (you don't use that often, though): You can put several agents outside of a room and then make them storm the room together, taking out multiple enemies at once. Difficulty is average, with some spikes. Try it, it's neat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted December 17, 2020 Author Share Posted December 17, 2020 9 minutes ago, Rally-Vincent--- said: Definitely the Banner Saga games (where is the third game in your list?),The Witcher 3, and Vakyria Chronicles. Torment: Tides of Numenera is a great game, but it is a lot of reading. A LOT. Play it when you have some time, if only to remember what's happening. Phantom Doctrine is an average game in an interesting Cold War spy setting. Its greatest weakpoint is that there is much less mission variety than in XCOM, and you can easily break it with certain agent abilities. I honestly can't remember how long to plat it is. You have to make at least two playthroughs plus start a third. 50 hours sound all right. I enjoyed it, as I do with most games with tactical turn based combat. It has one very neat feature (you don't use that often, though): You can put several agents outside of a room and then make them storm the room together, taking out multiple enemies at once. Difficulty is average, with some spikes. Try it, it's neat. I have all 3 Banner Sagas, but I'm setting a realistic expectation of hopefully doing 2 this year. I have Yakuza 3-7 left to play and I might be overshooting that as well by adding 3. I've been really wanting to get into Torment: Tides of Numenera, but I might need to play it like I do with VNs before I go to bed, like reading a book. Not sure if you played XCOM: Chimera Squad, but they set up the start of missions as breaching the locations which is pretty cool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rally-Vincent--- Posted December 17, 2020 Share Posted December 17, 2020 1 minute ago, Grotz99 said: Not sure if you played XCOM: Chimera Squad, but they set up the start of missions as breaching the locations which is pretty cool. Nah, I watched a let's play. Wasn't too interested in it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Grotz99 Posted December 30, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 30, 2020 (edited) Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Platinum #89 A New Hope Time to Completion: 2 weeks 4 days Completed Date: December 28 2020 Another Star Wars Side Quest... Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (SWJ:FO) takes place roughly 5 years after Anakin becomes Darth Vader and the Jedi Order is wiped out, about the same time that the movie Solo takes place. You play as Cal Kestis, a young Jedi pupil who escaped the purge and hides away as a scrapper, that is until one day the empire tracks him down. After escaping the Empire on the scrap planet and being rescued by some randos (apparently having the force and having to use it puts a giant tracking beacon on you), you set off on a journey to help find a list of force users and their locations in the galaxy. The whole story becomes about trying to stay one step ahead of the empire to track down this list, but you never really do, instead you are just another pawn (If you ever played an Uncharted game or seen an Indiana Jones movie, you know what I'm talking about...). It's not to say that there isn't cool story parts in this cliche, like the first time you visit Kashyyyk and encounter a battle to help liberate the Wookies (also battling with AT-ATs!) or what I think is more interesting than the main story is the part on the planet Dathomir, where you discover a different kind of magic exists in the universe and what happens to those people. Of course throughout this this whole ordeal, a Sith Inquisitor is always trying to get in the way. Overall though I wasn't too vested in the main story or the hundreds of little tidbits of information you find along the way, but the journey was fun and some conversations you have with the crew are kinda funny, especially after you get your last crew member. There was no side quests around anything, which I would have liked to at least see something for the captain of the ship, Greez, who just seems like your Uber driver and cook. Soulkiro with a Lightsabre The gameplay was very much like the Souls/Sekiro games, all the way down to the one random breakable in all those games, tons of useless cremation urns all over the place, (although I think items are in them in some of the Souls games, but don't worry about them in SWJ:FO). I've seen reviews where people complained that the combat was too hard and I'm not sure if it is because I've beaten Sekiro, but it really wasn't. I played on normal difficulty and probably should have played on hard, but there is an even easier difficulty and I only died maybe 8 times? Once you get the parrying and dodging down, it isn't bad. Along with attacks not doing a ton of damage to you, there seems to be a pretty big window of time to get a successful parry. Even falling off the cliff doesn't kill you, you just pop back up to where you were losing a little bit of health, which is nice since all the parkour you need to do requires some practice. It is especially satisfying to reflect lasers back at storm troopers or use force powers to toss them around like rag dolls. Experience in this game is only used for unlocking abilities, there is nothing that really increases stats other than finding secrets for expanding your HP bar or Force bar, so you never really feel more powerful until you get some of the later passive abilities. You can get these at the bon fire....I mean meditation spots throughout the levels. Nice part is that I never found myself having to farm experience since the abilities didn't make that big of an impact to progression. Collectaggedon There are a ton a things to collect in this game and only 5% are useful. Outside of getting life/force/healing stims, there are skins for your lightsabre hilt (actually like 6 different parts of the hilt, that you can barely ever see and you can customize and more than a dozen for each part), uniform skins, which really only change your sleeves and ugly looking panchos which cover most of your body, because nothing says don't shoot me because I have terrible fashion sense. Worst part is, you can't get most of them until you progress through the story and unlock force powers or moves that you apparently forgot when you trained as a kid. Even worse is that you need 100% exploration of each world, which basically requires all the Force Echos and man are some hidden. I got tired of running around and missing little places you need to check so I do admit to using a guide a little. These were all just a drag to collect as it was after finishing the game and you have to slog through all the enemies and run around the whole planet again, Dathomir being the worst as the maps try to be easy to follow, but take like 5 mins to plot out a way back to the ship, only to find that some elevators are only 1 way.... Overall This was a fun game to play through for a fan of the Star Wars universe. Anything endgame was just a slog, but required for the trophies. It has new game +, but luckily it isn't required to play through for getting the platinum, unlike the soulsbornekiro games. There is some small challenge things unlocked after completing the story, which also are not required. You companions aren't annoying and talking to them is really optional. Your droid friend is the best. The Good Fun Sekiro-like combat using awesome lightsabres BD-1 is cute Didn't have to grind xp Story doesn't overstay it's welcome The Bad Endgame item/100% map completion is a slog and definitely overstays it's welcome No real side quests/events to help flush out companions or other parts of the adventure The Ugly Nothing really, game looked good, not great, but the combat felt great Far Cry 3 Platinum #90 Mastered the Jungle Time to Completion: 7 Years 7 Months Completed Date: December 29 2020 Just wanted to add this one onto here as I finally did the coop missions using 2 controllers, which was pretty annoying since sometimes you had to carry stuff while being shot at and couldn't shoot back. Also, found out that one of my controllers must be broken, because if you hit L3 to run, it would usually jump/shoot/change weapons/reload/crouch all at once and sometimes wouldn't stop doing that until you ran out of ammo, so that character had to slowly walk everywhere ?. I honestly don't even remember what the story was about other than a kid got stranded on an island and decided to go Rambo on some pirates? Update: Been pretty busy trying to finish up some of my games and knock out misc trophies before new years. Got my count down to 5,276 and counting. Aiming for under 5k this year (I know I probably said that last year, but this year will be different!). Also going for >60% completion (57% currently). Almost finished with the Danganronpa 2 story and it's starting to finally fall into place in the last chapter, then I can play the Monomi minigame and do monotonous island stuff yay.......... I also finally went back and got Gold on all the core challenges in Hand of Fate 2, just need to grind out a few more misc trophies to get that very rare plat, forgot how much I liked that game. Picked up the RE7 DLC and started that, which is fun so far, a lot of variety, aiming to plat that soon too with my last playthrough on Madhouse. As for my next games, I'll be starting Dragon Ball Z Kakarot on the 1st and then Banner Saga 1. I'm picking up 3 more VNs from the sale this time and not sure what I'll play after Danganronpa 2, but I'll have Root Letter, Danganronpa Another Episoide and 428: Shibuya Scramble. I have Danganronpa 3 as well, but I might want a break from that series as it is another long plat. You can see the rest of the games I plan for this year here. I know I won't get to them all, so recommendations are welcome! Hope everyone has a great new year, has fun playing games and is ready for a whole year of trying to get a PS5 like I am! Edited December 30, 2020 by Grotz99 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJ_Radio Posted December 31, 2020 Share Posted December 31, 2020 (edited) I'm going to guess the time you set for Demon's Souls for the PS3 is because of the Pure Bladestone grind which can take people a whole bunch of hours to get. When I went for that platinum I basically followed a guide for the duping glitch, and setting the World/Character Tendency for Pure White and Pure Black to get certain items. Some of the bosses can be cheesed. Doing this game legit completely blind is rather difficult. The later Souls games are far more accessible and easier because From Software tossed out the tendency bullshit, so you can literally die a whole bunch of times and not have to worry about some items being potentially unobtainable. With a guide and using the duping glitch, I say the game is roughly 30 - 50 hours, provided those stones will drop accordingly and you get a little lucky with the Pure Bladestone. Otherwise Demon's Souls is easily around 80 - 100 hours if not more. You also have to be careful not to aggro NPCs like Stockpile Thomas because the only way to fix that is to start another playthrough. This of course also affects tendency. Demon's Souls is probably the most 'technical' of all the Souls games that From Software has made. The later games are much more straightforward and less hassle. Edited December 31, 2020 by Spaz 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted December 31, 2020 Author Share Posted December 31, 2020 56 minutes ago, Spaz said: I'm going to guess the time you set for Demon's Souls for the PS3 is because of the Pure Bladestone grind which can take people a whole bunch of hours to get. When I went for that platinum I basically followed a guide for the duping glitch, and setting the World/Character Tendency for Pure White and Pure Black to get certain items. Some of the bosses can be cheesed. Doing this game legit completely blind is rather difficult. The later Souls games are far more accessible and easier because From Software tossed out the tendency bullshit, so you can literally die a whole bunch of times and not have to worry about some items being potentially unobtainable. With a guide and using the duping glitch, I say the game is roughly 30 - 50 hours, provided those stones will drop accordingly and you get a little lucky with the Pure Bladestone. Otherwise Demon's Souls is easily around 80 - 100 hours if not more. You also have to be careful not to aggro NPCs like Stockpile Thomas because the only way to fix that is to start another playthrough. This of course also affects tendency. Demon's Souls is probably the most 'technical' of all the Souls games that From Software has made. The later games are much more straightforward and less hassle. This game is what I'm having a big contention with. I really want to play it and would use the exploit probably due to the excessive amount of grinding involved after beating it, but with the remake I'm wondering if I should just wait until I get a ps5. On the other hand, it would make a good dent in my unearned if I play it on the ps3. You are probably right about the time I got from that site. From what I remember, it actually runs better than Dark Souls on ps3, the game's issues started to annoy me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted January 8, 2021 Author Share Posted January 8, 2021 (edited) Hand of Fate 2 Platinum #91 Games Master Time to Completion: 3 Years 1 Month Platinum Date: January 4 2021 This unique game has taken me far longer than it should have to get this (currently) very rare platinum. I played the first one on PC a while back when a friend told me about it and I enjoyed it, although it had a few parts which needed improvement. Seeing that the second one was coming out, I decided to get it on PS4 and see if it is as good as the first one. I was elated to see that they actually made it better. For some reason, I stopped playing it about 5 levels from the ending, but during a recent sale, my friend was looking for a recommendation so I told him about this game and he was really enjoying it, which is when I decided to jump back in so we can discuss deck builds. Since this is a pretty unique game and it has such a low amount of owners, be warned that this might get long... Deck building roguelike with some 3rd person combat... The main story of this game involves you, a random adventurer, who is to save the kingdom from the scourge of the land, which is played over the course of 22 challenges. For each challenge, you build out a deck from cards that you have unlocked. These cards include usually 1 companion, events, items and starting items (usually the questing mace as that token takes forever to finish all versions and is required for a trophy). These cards are either unlocked as your roam through the story or by fulfilling conditions for a token on card while playing. In order to fulfill a condition on a card, you need to use it during the challenges, putting in too many is usually not optimal (and the dealer will tell you that sometimes), but it's nice to get something out of the challenges in case you fail. It is also very satisfying to earn the token and at the end open them up, they must have spent a lot of time getting this part right because it gets you filled with excitement to see what it is, like opening a new pack of cards or a loot box, but doesn't cost you money. Some of the cards might chain tokens creating their own side stories, especially for the companions, which require you to complete all of them to get the last reward. With this kind of setup, it got addicting to work on unlocking cards, probably more so than actually completing the challenges. Once your deck is prepared, you embark on a journey that the dealer has laid out in front of you in a form of card paths. Using your figure, you can choose where to move them and as they land on face down cards, they flip over and you deal with the encounter. It's mostly text based story with some gambits and/or combat. The gambits take some getting use to, they might seem like luck, but once you play enough, you'll get the timing down or can watch the cards as they change places during a chance gambit. For some reason though, even at the end I swear I watched the right card to pick and it ended up being a huge failure. The dice gambit is probably the most annoying, no matter how good you think you are with them, they'll sometimes come up lower than needed, which is why I like items that help in that area. Certain companions can help out in these areas as well, allowing mulligans or duplicating cards, but you'll lose their help for a few turns. The combat isn't anything too complicated, but requires you to be on your toes and to either parry or dodge attacks. Although it seems simple, at the beginning it seems harder than it should be. Luckily they made parrying or dodging able to cancel your in motion attack if need be. Your companion also helps out here, as you can use their ability and they do some little attacks or become decoys. Throughout the game, I liked using the first character, the mage, the most as he can put a shield on you that absorbs 1 hit. When things get dire, you can basically roll around until you're able to get another shield. Other than that, he takes like 3 hits before being knocked down and his damage is useless. Depending on the type of enemies you fight, there are better types of weapons suited against them, for example the 1h sword against northerners due to the easy parry and stab, but I mostly like using 2hs. Their damage is great, especially during critical hits rather than stinging like a little bee with 2 1h weapons. Now that the explanation is out of the way... Other than opening tokens to get new cards, the parts I really liked about this game writing and "controlled randomness". What I mean by "controlled randomness" is how you can influence the gambits that at the surface look to be luck based, but can be manipulated some. I think I focused more on trying to control the gambits than actually gear my character up for combat. With good enough timing and awareness you can complete any battle with the starter weapon and no armor, but sometimes when you need to roll the dice and they expect an 18, there isn't much you can do except for pray to the dice gods. Each encounter's writing is done really well and even if you think you might be making the right choice, they'll throw some sand in your eyes and then give you a swift kick to the nuts. An example of this is when you are at a banquet and they play a game to see who has the coins in their pie (done with a wheel gambit that circles cards around). You find the coins, you become the champion for the night, sounds good right? What they don't tell you though is that now you are to be dragged up to the top of the mountain for a sacrifice. Going to wish you have chosen to just pocket the money. Not going to tell you how it ends as you'll have to play to find out. Each of the encounters are little stories like this. Some require choosing different choices each time and getting different outcomes to unlock the card's token. I think by the end of the game, I have unlocked all but 2 tokens for the cards I had (no paid DLC cards). There are also times where you'll need specific items from other cards to complete them, which requires some farming. Luckily they added an endless mode as free DLC which is great for this. Platinum thoughts Most of the trophies are pretty strait forward except a few that I had to look up, because they are pretty obscure and require a decent setup. For instance, getting 12 blessings in a run on one of the challenges requires you to stack as many blessing reward encounters as possible and win those encounters. The most complicated would be the Miracle trophy for getting a huge success on the thieves encounter. There is one specific challenge which requires you to get all the way to the end without hitting the thieves encounter (or another card that lets you replay encounters) until the very last spot you can land on, after completing a task in that last area which gives you the huge success to add to the gambit. This trophy took me probably 10 tries of having to go through the entire encounter. That feeling when you haven't hit the encounter you need until the last section, but then its the first one you step on before getting the potion is just.....rage inducing. Some of the gold tokens take some tries to figure out the best way to do them with the best deck build, but you can unlock other card's tokens along the way and it's figuring out the best way to do the challenge which is fun. Also, going through each of the companion stories is fun to unlock them as platinum cards, which is required for trophies and all golds anyways, but makes you have to use them all. I haven't bought the DLC yet for this game, but I plan to. I don't think it's ever gone on sale or ever will so I'll wait and see. I did unlock some DLC trophies, because apparently you can still get them in the base game. The Good Very fun card based roguelike with luck and combat involved The writing Fluid combat that doesn't have you cursing at the TV for something stupid happening The Bad Having to do the same challenge 10+ times for a trophy The Ugly Your character is very plain, the costume color options don't help Update: Well that was 1/6 games I have going currently completed. Trying to see if I can get these down to 1 PS3 game, 1 big PS4 game and 1 VN. Although now my itch for card based games is back and I kind of want to start Slay the Spire on the side. Been playing DBZ Kakarot and it is a nostalgia trip. I watched the entire series on Toonami back when I was in Jr high/high school starting with the Freeza saga. This game does an amazing job of reliving that experience, but with awesome combat and RPG elements. Its like playing a 3 axis fighting game inside an RPG. I'm kind of powering through it as I just finished the Cell saga and have just one more saga to go. Also started knocking out some of the RE7 DLC trophies which are fun and started a new VN Root Letter, since I finished Danganronpa 2's story and wanted another story while I chip away at the extra grinding. Uncharted 3 is my next PS3 game which will do well to knock down my unearned since it was on there before with 8 trophies. I am now thinking about what to play after DBZ Kakarot and so far it's between AC Odyssey(which I also have all the DLC for), Farcry Primal or The Banner Saga. Edited January 8, 2021 by Grotz99 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted January 19, 2021 Author Share Posted January 19, 2021 (edited) I know I said I wasn't going to talk about non-platinum games, but I feel like this is worth the merit before I go into more platinums as I just finished getting all the trophies for this 3.30% completion and is another low player count game. I stopped playing it for a couple years after finishing the main story and barely touching the NG+ mode. I added this game to the UR cleanup event thinking I would give it a try to see if I can do it. Jumping back in I was thinking I should go back through the tutorial or something, but after 1 round I remembered exactly how to play it. The story of this game is like taking mech warrior and putting it into the US Civil War, but only equipping weapons they used during those times. Meaning that the best weapons that you can attach to mechs are cannons or flame throwers (or swords if you do the last level on NG+ as well as other decent weapons depending on the situation, like woodchippers). You start in the NE part of the US and battle your way towards the west against the confederates, miners, Native Americans etc. Honestly, there wasn't a ton of story except that you want to make your way to Washington state and defeat a lookalike Nazi. Ironclad Tactics is another deck builder based game but with some active turn based (ATB) elements. For each level, you build a deck of 20 cards, some cards better suited for certain situations, and play cards using AP in a ATB fashion. The battlefields have 4-5 lanes to play cards and the goal is usually to score Victory Points (VP) quicker than your opponent until you have 10. These are scored in different ways, but most commonly, it means getting your mech units to the other side. Here is a picture for reference since this is probably confusing to explain: While going across the mechs can battle each other, which each attack during the kill phase based on what their weapon is capable of. The cards you are dealt rotate at the bottom each turn. The game isn't too complicated once you get use to it, but the strategies take some thinking and then there is always a luck factor as with a lot of deck builders to keep things interesting. As you complete levels, you unlock more cards. Each level also has additional challenges to complete to unlock even more cards as well as NG+. If you like deck builder games with some extra elements involved, look this game up. Unfortunately, I think it is rarely on sale. It provides a good amount of challenge, but nothing too skill based for a UR completion %, just some strategy and luck (mostly on the last boss in NG+). With that UR off my list I have also started Torment: Tides of Numenera earlier than I thought I would and it sucked me right into it's world. Was planning to play something while going through this game, but haven't put it down yet. Still looking at either Banner Saga and probably Far Cry Primal (as I need something silly and laid back and mindless). Edited January 19, 2021 by Grotz99 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted January 22, 2021 Author Share Posted January 22, 2021 (edited) Dragon Ball Z Kakarot Platinum #93 Dragon Ball Master Time to Completion: 2 weeks 22 hours Platinum Date: January 16 2021 A nostalgia trip... Around the time I was in jr high/high school, Cartoon Network recently became a free channel in the US and it had a segment that started around 5 PM PST every day called Toonami. I started to watch a show called Dragon Ball Z every day (and sometimes at night, the late night Toonami/Adult Swim started around 10 PM and it would be 1 episode ahead of the afternoon showing). Those 5 episode streaks that covered about 5 mins of actual time in the show as 2 fighters continued to power up really drew me in apparently, but when the actual fighting started between the 2 power houses, it felt worth it. This then led me down the road of watching anime, as I watched others like Gundam series, Outlaw Star and Cowboy Bepop on Toonami. I eventually expanded to downloading or buying subtitled series. Fast Forward 20 or so years and a game that covered all of the DBZ series was released. I was skeptical when I first saw it, the graphics didn't show as good in streams/videos and it had you run around doing fetch quests like you're in an MMO. There hasn't really been very good anime adopted games in my experience for RPGs. The last actual DBZ game I played was a SNES rom that covered through the Freeze Saga and was a decent turn based RPG. The fighting games looked to be well received, but I'm not into those too much. I then started to hear some positive things about this game and my nostalgia was kicking in from when I was a teenager, so I decided to pull the trigger on buying a physical copy of this game for around $25. Playing it started out tame enough, help your hopeless son catch a fish and collect some ingredients for food then head back and have a nice home cooked meal with the family, until the Saiyans decided to land on the planet looking for you. The game then jumps right into the anime's story line and I had that same feeling of excitement from when I was a teenager and remembered every part of the story you play through. You could say my nostalgia was over 9000... I did not expect the gameplay to be so good They did an excellent job with the combat in this game, almost like a 3 axis fighting game, but with more real time RPG elements like stats and damage numbers. I never got tired of the combat, especially shooting Kamehamehas or spirit bombs (which are OP) or pulling off combo attacks and knocking enemies through mountains. Once you get the combat down and you are around the enemy's level, it wasn't really that difficult to win usually. There are healing items and Senzu beans (full heal items) which honestly I used maybe twice as I was learning, but are really not necessary. You also get to switch through characters as you play with about 6 as main controllable characters and the rest can help support you, as you get 2 others in your party. There unfortunately isn't a lot of time you get to use some of them though, unless you're playing during a free time part (really wanted to get Tien some fighting time, but it was limited). When you aren't fighting, you are usually flying around helping people with their side quests and collecting materials for upgrading the training room or vehicles. There isn't any trophies for the vehicle stuff, which I was glad for since they kind of lose their notoriety pretty quick. There is also a ton of stuff to collect which is neat if you're a fan of the series but luckily not required. I think there is a trophy for collecting a certain amount of entries, but I would be surprised if it's even possible to finish the game without getting it. Overall expression It's been a while when I sat down to play a game and didn't think "Hmmm, what am I in the mood to play today?". I wanted to continue my adventure as Goku, Gohan, Piccolo or the others until I encountered Majin Buu and I knew it would soon be coming to an end, which was probably ok since my wife would give me weird looks for playing a cartoon looking game with jacked dudes yelling while powering up and shooting beams of light. Trying to explain the series or story to her...yeah I tried for 10 minutes with her rolling her eyes 100 times. Luckily after finishing the main story, there was plenty of side quests and some other challenging fights in the post game to do until I got the platinum. The platinum is pretty strait forward in this game and there isn't anything missable, you just need to get to around level 95 to finish up the last extra boss fights. Overall, I really enjoyed this game a lot more than I thought I would and I hope they do the same for other limited anime series (not talking One Piece here because that just keeps going forever, although I think it would be another great fit). I do see them possibly doing this for regular Dragon Ball (when Goku is a kid) though. I do wish they add voices for most of the dialogue, but there was a decent amount and they got the voices down from what I remember (in the English Dub, I know they were totally different in Japanese). This took roughly 50 hours to platinum, which is perfect for a RPG type game. The Good Fun combat mixed with RPG element that covers the most of the DBZ storyline. Voice dubbing was pretty accurate from what I remembered. The Bad Felt like it ended too quickly? Seriously though the only thing I can think of is that when you are flying around and attracting enemies, it can get annoying to lose them and avoid combat. Sometimes, if you are a higher level than them, you can fly into them and insta win at least. The Ugly If you aren't a main character (Saiyan or Piccolo), you take a back seat to everything, just like in the series, but I wish they got some more fighting time. Update: Finished my first game, in the post above this one, for the 2021 UR Cleanup event ran by @Copanele, @Mori and @Arcesius and started my second already, Torment: Tides of Numenera. I was going to be surprised if I finish first set of 5 games as I had a total of 13 UR trophies on my account when I started, but now up to 17 already! The event is for a good cause and it is a great way to push myself to finish harder games and clear up some unearned trophies this year. I'm really into Torment: Tides of Numenera, which I thought I'd play slowly, with the amount of reading involved, along with others games, but I've really gotten into it this time. I think I might start Farcry Primal as something lighter to play along with it. When I have to be stuck in my home office, I've been playing Uncharted 3 on the PS3 and making good progress there. I'm also very tempted to start Slay the Spire as I love deck builder card type games. I'm trying to get through the boring post game grinding in Danganronpa and should have that done soon so I can write a very spoilerish post about it (don't worry, I'll use the spoiler drop downs). My first wave list for the 2021 UR cleanup: Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten DX (22%) 2.28% rarity Ironclad Tactics (50%) 3.30% rarity ? Phantom Doctrine (0%) 0.69% rarity Torment: Tides of Numenera (29%) 1.58% rarity The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (10%) 0.31% rarity I realized I made an error since I'm going to start The Banner Saga soon and did not add it to that list ? I know what you're thinking after reading through this post and MAYBE noticed that I skipped a platinum to post about. I also finished Root Letter, a VN with some detectiveness to it, but I really don't have much to say about it. It was really just OK. Edited January 22, 2021 by Grotz99 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted February 4, 2021 Author Share Posted February 4, 2021 If anyone looked at my account, they would have noticed that I was able to pick up a PS5 to play my PS4 games on...but quieter! Took 30 minutes of spamming the PS5 add-to-cart URL for Walmart and blasting through checkout to achieve it. Other than my current PS4 games I'm working on finishing up, I played Astro's Playroom and BugSnax. Platinum #95 You've Only Done Everything Time to Completion: 1 Day 5 Hours Platinum Date: January 29 2021 This was a cute little platformer showing off the capabilities of the PS5 DualSense controller. Can't really put into words how much the beginning tutorial creeped out my wife and I, but controller made it feel that real. I'm still not a huge fan usually of audio through the controller, but they did a good job of it in this game. They have you take advantage of the microphone slot too, which I don't remember using that kind of feature since Zelda Phantom Hourglass on the DS. Once you got controller of little Astro, you had a mission to find puzzle pieces and other PS related collectables. I really enjoyed actually finding the old PlayStation consoles and peripherals. I have every 1st release of the Playstations (except the Vita and the other really old handheld, which I can't remember the name of) and forgot about some of the strange things they came out with. The levels were pretty entertaining and short, seeing as how one of the addon trophies required a total time of under 7 minutes for all of them. If you wandered around the areas enough, you'll eventually find all the collectables, but some can be pretty tricky to spot. The last boss level was kind of random in mind, but awesome at the same time. It actually took me a few attempts to get their attacks down. I'm not going to go too much more into this game as it comes free on the PS5 and it's really just a neat way to showcase the controller capabilities. It's a quick platinum that anyone who gets the console should play. Now for a stranger PS5 game... Platinum #96 Bugsnax Master Time to Completion: 1 Week 1 Day Platinum Date: February 1 2021 What did I just walk into and am I a little old for this... I somewhat had an idea what the game was going to be about and after playing it (since it was free on PS+), the answer is yes and no. This game was pure joy to play and reminded me a little of when I played Pokemon back in the day, although this wasn't an RPG, it was all about figuring out how to catch random tasty bugs in the shape of animals. While 75% of the bugs were no problem with the proper equipment, some actually took a bit of thinking to figure out how to catch them (looking at you Flaming Cheepoof). Starting out on the island, you run into a "person" called a Grumpus who asks you to help bring it's friends back home. This usually requires helping them with quests and feeding them the crack of the game...Bugsnax. Eventually you'll have a bunch of Grumpuses in town that look like a Barney who ate a Teletubby who ate a Smurf then thrown into a blender(I know those are older cartoons, don't judge me). After completing the game, I had about 25 Bugsnax left to find which were mostly easy. There really isn't much of a story, so I won't spoil it, but the ending has a pretty crazy twist and is the best part of the game. Overall I found it fun and hard to put down, but I needed something silly to take a break from Torment: Tides of Numenera and Uncharted 3's Crushing run. It felt satisfying to catch some of the more complicated Bugsnax, but annoying finding out you needed another when you got a quest for it later (you can't hold that many at a time). The Good Nice game to take your mind off things with some simple silliness and a little bit of puzzle solving. Some Bugsnax when fed to the Grumpuses made me laugh. The Bad Some of the Grumpuses are pretty annoying (looking at you Filbo). The Ugly Sometimes the tools would glitch out or the Bugsnax would randomly disappear or fly into oblivion due to the physics. If you remember the giant knocking you into space in Skyrim, you know what I'm talking about. Update: The PS5 sidetracked me a little, but I still haven't bought any new games for it, although once they go on sale, there are a decent amount I want right now. I'm almost done reading Danganronpa IF and that'll finish Danganronpa so I'll have my thoughts for that soon. I know I skipped platinum 94, but getting the platinum in Pillars of the Earth is only 1/3 the story. Once I finish the other 2 books then I'll post some thoughts. Once I clean those 2 up, it'll be time for another VN and I've been waiting to play 428: Shibuya Scramble. I'm chipping away at Torment: Tides of Numenera still, but it is a lot of reading and sometimes reloading (load times are awful, yes it is still on my PS4), I'll probably take a break after my first playthrough on it and I'll need to map out the remaining trophies on some paper to make sure not to miss something. On PS3 I'm about halfway through Uncharted 3's Crushing campaign, once that is done, there is just a few misc trophies to knock out for the platinum. Been chipping away at Slay the Spire and honestly I don't see myself finishing that anytime soon, but I'll enjoy a run or 2 every once in a while between games. It's not a bad game, it's actually a really good deckbuilding roguelike, but I like to take my time with card based games. I really just need to not let other shiny games distract me from finishing all these. I'm already trying to think of what to play next...most likely starting AC Odyssey. It's been about a year since I played my last AC game. At the same time I want to start The Banner Saga to get rolling on that trilogy and start Yakuza 3 to get through those or wait for the Yakuza Like a Dragon PS5 upgrade in March. Problem is, none of these are short games. First world problems right here... 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted February 18, 2021 Author Share Posted February 18, 2021 Danganronpa 1-2 Reload Platinum #97 Despair's Last Reward Time to Completion: 4 Months 1 Week Platinum Date: February 9 2021 Wasn't exactly sure what to expect with this game when someone recommended if you like Phoenix Wright and Zero Escape/Zero Time Dilemma to check this out, but I am sure as hell glad I did. This consists of 2 games which are for the most part Visual Novels (VN) and include some side game grinding. The journey to the platinum for this game was probably longer than those 3 games combined, but had some stuff you can do while zoning out and listening to music or watching TV if you have multiple screens. Heavy spoilers ahead, but I'll keep them in the spoiler sections Danganronpa 1 This was a great intro to the series which takes place in a school with a class of students. Each of the characters had specific qualities which defined them as Ultimates (basically gifted with the ability to be the best at what they do). The school itself was setup to help cultivate these students into entities to run the world. Of course things didn't end up being the perfect life for these students as it quickly turns into a Hunger Games type scenario with some murder mystery solving. I went into the game more blind than this even and although this wasn't too much of a surprise, it's hard to talk about more without spoilers so here's for the people that have played it or do not care to... Spoiler Favorite character for this one is going be Genocide Jack. It was a hard choice actually there are (were) some other characters I really liked in this one, but her interaction with Byakuya was a good distraction. The time spent with Mondo was also pretty awesome, until later...(maybe my favorite punishment) It's probably what made me like Danganronpa 1 more than 2 was the amount of time you get to spend engaging with your classmates. My favorite chapter for this one must be chapter 3 as it had a great twist and had me actually wondering until near the end of the trial of who dunit. Was kind of sad with the result as I liked that character. Chapter 4 was a bit depressing and I hated to see Sakura go. The ending seemed to be intentional to leave you questioning what is actually going on outside. When I first finished it, I wanted to think that they were all good and the building was in the middle of no where, just replicating the school and that they got kidnapped. The despair stuff seemed pretty far fetched, but was an interesting idea of classism anarchy. Talking to a friend they said to talk to them about it after finishing the 2nd one, so I knew that the story must continue on. Danganronpa 2 Same premise as the first one, but this time you are on a set of islands. This one actually continues on the story of the first so they should definitely be played in order. For some reason I didn't really care about the characters as much in this one as the first, but I don't think you got as much time to get to know them and their back stories. The mysteries were a lot more elaborate and interesting this time around though. Spoiler So some of things in game bothered me at the start, like how unreal things seemed to be compared to the first game. They at least showed that Monokuma in the first one was a robot and how that worked...sorta. But then they bring in Monomi, the annoying rabbit. The giant robots who guarded the paths seemed silly and during chapter 3 they randomly got infected with a disease? I thought they were really stretching the imagination here, but with how good the mysteries were, I went along with it. Of course at the end it all makes sense why it is this way, but did they really have the right to do the same shit Junko did to them in the first one to other people? Especially while the world has fallen apart? Favorite character is no doubt Nagito. Dude is just so crazy (I guess I like the crazy ones) and plays such an interesting role. The way he doesn't care what happens as long as hope prevails makes him such a wildcard. Even his ultimate ability was across several chapters to help plan the murder in That of course brings us to my favorite chapter, chapter 5. The way this was planned and executed was pretty ingenious. It was also better than any of the chapters in the first game. Going into the court without a clue for who might have dunit other than himself, but knowing there is still a murdered made for such an interesting climax. The other chapters were more interesting as well, but they mainly focused on exploring and solving the mysteries. I don't think I really cared about the characters as much as the first game. The characters also seemed more distant and cautious about others and trust wasn't really built up until later. The ending for this one made the whole game make a lot more sense. Of course it was virtual reality....It did also answer the question that yes apparently something did fuck up the world. People complained about the monomi minigame, but I think it only took around 3 hours to knock it out. Compared to the rest of the game and the school and island modes, that was nothing. Talking about the school and island modes, it was neat to get a little more back story for the characters, but it wasn't enough to warrant the amount of time it too to go through them 4-5 times. Danganronpa IF was a neat read (which is why it took a little longer to complete as I read the whole thing). Was nice to see an alternate(?) version of the first game. This was a little tough to write as it has been so long since I played the first one in gamer time (I knew I should have reviewed the first one when I finished, but someone told me to just play the 2nd). I'm curious about the 3rd one now, which I do have, but the side stuff in that makes it look like it takes as long as these 2 combined. I also picked up Despair Girls when it was on sale after finishing these since I really did like them. I would like to see how the rest of the story unfolds and I'm always in the mood for a good mystery (if you couldn't tell from the Sherlock Holmes games, Zero Escape/Zero Time Dilemma, Phoenix Wright etc I've played). I am always up for recommendations for games in that genre. They don't have to be VNs. Next for me in the VN section is going to be 428: Shibuya Scramble. The Good Both games have great mysteries to solve and they get more and more complex as you progress. The characters are pretty unique and do a good job getting you to care about some of them. (most from the first game rather than the 2nd). The Bad School mode and Island mode were an unnecessary amount of time for the amount of back story you get. The Ugly Monomi minigame makes you spend more time than you want to or should. Update: With my next VN lined up to start soon, I've also started playing Assassins Creed Odyssey, as it's been a year since my last AC game. I can already tell this game is going to be a grind, the world is huge and I have all the DLC. I've been chipping away at Slay the Spire which is awesome and does start to get addicting, currently struggling beating it with the Silent as I have beaten it already with the other 2 characters. I got to the last boss last run, but didn't have any pots and not full health, he is seriously the least defensive character. Nothing to do with PS, but I also picked up Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury for my switch, going to try to get my wife to play coop with me (we'll see how that goes...) I did manage to finish my first playthrough of Torment: Tides of Numenera and got to 41/53 trophies (was 3/53) with 9 of those being URs. Need a break before the next run since it's a lot of reading and I have to plan it out since I somehow couldn't get Tybir to like me after all I did for that bastard. Now my next run, I need 3 characters to revere me and 3 to hate me, so I'll have to figure out the best way to do that. Pillars of the Earth is also finished, as of last night so I'll give a quick synopses of that soon. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted March 2, 2021 Author Share Posted March 2, 2021 The Pillars of the Earth Platinum #94 Platinum Chalice Time to Completion: 4 weeks Platinum Date: February 17 2021 This ended up being platinum #94, but 2 of the books are in the DLC, so I didn't finish it for a while after as each book is about the same length. This game was honestly just alright, it was like playing a weaker version of King's Quest. The story started where the younger characters are probably 12-15 years old and by the time you finish the story, they are in their 30s. During this time, there is drama that builds between the kids of a king whose castle and land was taken from him and the family that took control of that land. Along side that is drama between a Pryor and his cathedral and the Bishop of the region. All the story lines are connected in a way throughout. Since there isn't much to this except for the story, as it is a VN, I'm going to cut this one short. The Good Had some decent voice acting The Bad Pretty long winded story, but at least really comes together at the end. Play King's Quest instead. The Ugly For some reason the game kept crashing on a part in book 2. I read that this happens often in different points in the game. Luckily, I transferred it to my PS5 and it worked. Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception Platinum #98 Platinum Time to Completion: 9 years 3 months Platinum Date: February 26 2021 This wraps up my Uncharted platinums for PS3, 9 years later... After playing them all, I would rank this one as 3rd with my personal complete order from favorite to least favorite 4, 2, 3, 1. Uncharted 4 and 2 are really close to even, but I think 4 did a little better job with the story telling. The story was as crazy as ever and did have one of my favorite levels in the series, fighting on a plane while it starts to go down crashing and making it to the ground safely by skydiving to a crate with a parachute on it. This was of course followed by my least favorite and biggest waste of time level, wandering the desert. I don't know how he goes at least 1 day without food and water, then drinks 2 sips and is ready to fight 50 dudes. We all know about the series so I'll skip the obvious stuff, but there were some things that really bothered me in this one compared to 2. For some reason, unless it's a weird controller button combo, you can't change the side your gun/camera is on. In UC2 you can push L3 to move the camera and aim to the other side of your body, making it easier to peak around corners for both sides. In this one, you are stuck being able to only peak around a right corner. In a few fights if you die at a specific spot, it places you in what is the expected spot? For example, during the pirate level (13 I think) after I hit a certain point on the map after only silently killing 2 people and then died, it started me in a spot in the middle of the map and in combat, would have rather restarted in stealth with those 2 still alive. Same thing happened, but half way through the whole fight, while on the ship in the theater (quite possibly the hardest combat spot in the game). At least it was after clearing about half the bad guys out, when you die though you are placed in a spot where everyone can aim at and if you don't move quickly, you'll die right there. Basically had to fight from behind those boxes as leaving to where I liked to have started out would get my killed. The Good I liked learning the backstory of how Drake meets Sully. Usual action packed scenes. The Bad Multiplayer is gone, which is half the total trophies. The Ugly Mostly explained above, can't change aiming side and dying places you in bad spots sometimes. Update: 428: Shibuya Scramble - Started this VN, it has a neat story flow that changes depending on what the choices you make for each character. Currently finished the first 2 hours of the story (out of 9?). Assassins Creed Odyssey - This game is huge! Chipping away at what I can, but there is just so much. Probably explored 1/3 the map so far and am level 52 and finished 4/9 episodes. No idea how long the DLC is, but I haven't started that yet either, outside of random side stories I encountered along the way. Demon's Souls (PS5) - Ended up buying this as my first purchased PS5 game since my friend just got it as well. I know I planned to go back and play the PS3 version, but this just looks so pretty in a dark and dreary sort of way. Of course after I killed the first boss and went back to the nexus, I ended up killing myself on accident from a place that I couldn't retrieve my 6k souls while looking for the person to talk to in order to use souls for levels. I know it's not much, but it would have been at least a few levels to get started. Slay the Spire - Finally finished a play through with Silent, now I am trying to work on getting the real endings. Defender's Quest - Started playing this again to get ready for platinum #100. About to finish new game plus with no generic recruits. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted March 31, 2021 Author Share Posted March 31, 2021 (edited) Been a while since I posted in here it feels like, but I've been tackling longer games and now trying to finish my 100th platinum. Actually just got the platinum for AC Odyssey, but waiting to post on that one until I finish the rest of the DLC. I will say though, it has been an epic journey in that game compared to others. Picked Kassandra and she has one of the best personalities of the series. Speaking of DLC, it looks like the PS3 store is closing and I wanted to get some feedback about buying the missing DLC for my PS3 games and if it is worth it. This kind of move really strikes a blow to gaming and definitely to trophy hunters. I know it's an old console, but there are still many people that play games on it, including myself. I don't mind not being able to buy the core games on the store, since you can get most of them from Ebay or wherever (pretty sure PS3 physical games just got a value boost), but having the DLC wiped out means that they'll never be experienced again anyone who doesn't own them already. Not to mention this is awful for Vita devs who are still making games since there isn't a new PS handheld. Since the PS3 web store is already gone, unless someone has a link they want to share, I'll have to look these up on my PS3 for prices, but here are most of the DLCs I'm missing: Metro Last Light DLC (20 trophies) Batman Arkham Origins DLC (12 trophies) Dishonored DLC (30 trophies) TWD 400 Days DLC (8 trophies) Star Wars Pinball (42 trophies) Bulletstorm DLC (10 trophies) Rage DLC (10 trophies) Fallout New Vegas (10 trophies (need to confirm if I already have them or not)) Zen Pinball Pack 3 and 4 (8 trophies) Deadspace 2 DLC (8 trophies) Assassins Creed 3 DLC (10 trophies) Little Big Planet 2 DLC (32 trophies) The Mysteries of Little Riddle (30 trophies) Super Street Fight IV DLC (17 trophies) Bioshock DLC (12 trophies) Fallout 3 DLC (22 trophies) Modern Warfare 3 DLC (26 trophies) That is a total of 307 trophies about to be unobtainable. There are some others that I didn't add are either around MP or I really just don't care about them. The ones in green I'm strongly considering getting. My account is already at a point of no return type of mess, so it's probably not a huge deal and my fat PS3 is old so who knows when it'll decide to conk out, but I would hate to not even have the chance to get these trophies. I also moved my PS4 up to my man cave office area, which I used to play my PS3 in when the wife needed the other room, but it's hard to go back to the PS4 after playing PS4 games on the PS5, the speed and quality is night and day. If anyone can recommend any of these as "must haves" or "worth playing", let me know. Edited March 31, 2021 by Grotz99 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted April 13, 2021 Author Share Posted April 13, 2021 (edited) Assassins Creed Odyssey Platinum #99 Epic Cycle Time to Completion: 2 months 1 day Platinum Date: April 9 2021 I waited until finishing all the DLC to finally write up about this game and what an adventure it was. Starting off on your "little" secluded and sheltered island, you have no idea how grand of scale the world map is going to end up being and how much goes on in the outside world. I started off pretty well completing all the locations I came across, but soon realized that was tiring and stuck mostly to the quests or what I needed to complete for trophies/legendary items or improvements. The crazy part is that once you complete the main story in the base game, you have the option to go to new game + and do it all over again. By the end of the last DLC, I was level 89 and probably completed about 75% of the total locations (I think the max level is 99?). For my playthrough I opted to play as Kassandra. This character probably has the most personality without being silly or annoying (if you played the series, you can probably guess who I'm talking about) since the AC2 games. She witty and has a fiery passion for getting the job done. Of course there are dialogue options so you can be nice or mean with little consequence (from what I've seen, was pretty much in the chaotic neutral area). Luckily this made it so I didn't mind playing as her for 150+ hours. The other nice thing about this game is the other characters you meet, you get to actually have friends and not be a loner except for your minions. You get to meet characters such as Hippokrates, Aristophanes, etc from those times in Greece. The story starts off well enough, but basically boils down to taking out a cult who threatens you and your family, which follows the usual AC formula of finding and assassinating them. Although the main story is still pretty well done and all the side quests have some neat stories and are actually all voice acted (honestly never got tired of Kassandra's accent). They still unfortunately try to shoehorn in some of the present time story and this is more apparent in the Atlantis DLC (more on that later). For me, it was like it broke the immersion of actually playing a game during those times in one of my favorite times in history. They really need to drop the present time story stuff in these games once and for all (haven't played Valhalla yet so not sure if it still has some). The gameplay definitely was improved a bit from AC Origins but kept the same design. They were able to make the combat a bit challenging (unless you made a build like mine) where it's a little more tricky to decide when to parry or dodge attacks. The most fun was using the overpower attacks, which take 3 bars of energy by default, but do the most damage. Using the 2h mace or axe had to be the most satisfying and allowed you to hit up to 4 enemies in quick succession and give you some breathing room. Although, at the end of the game I opted mostly for the daggers, which are great for quick attacks and allowed me to find something silly that trivialized a lot of enemies. You can put points into minor stat type upgrades, talking 1-2% or less per point and they become less valuable the more points you put into the same area, at first I put about 1 point into each part to get the most the out of them, once I got the abilities I wanted. I then noticed while fighting I was randomly hitting extremely hard every once in a while, almost 1 shotting enemies with my daggers. End up looking back through and there is a stat that gives your normal attacks to do assassination damage, which usually can almost 1 shot enemies when you sneak up on them, of course I pumped enough points to give me a 6% chance and while fighting bosses, you can see this hit them at least once, which isn't a 1 shot for them but a crap ton of damage. I used this with a poison build and set, because why not since not only is poison a DOT but also lowers their damage and armor making them barely scratch me. Boat combat is back! It's not fun as AC Black Flag, but still had fun raiding ships. Legacy of the First Blade DLC This DLC overall was just alright. Seemed kind of silly to have 3 chapters for it, but it is what it is. It was 1 more main quest line with additional side quests. Minor story spoiler for the DLC: Spoiler They forced you into some kind of relationship/marriage thing which I thought was silly and their were other more interesting characters throughout the game I'd rather be with (and was ?) The Fate of Alantis DLC Now this DLC I liked. Got to visit 3 mythical lands all having their own Greek gods and issues surrounding them. This also helps tie in who you actually are and why you are so popular for starting off as a random island girl merc. Unfortunately, they decided to thrown in ever more of the present world story which again feels like it has no context to what is actually going on. At this point I would just say make a new AC game that is only in the present world and ties all the present world story from the other games together. I thought the ending was a little anti-climatic, but I won't spoil that here. Overall AC Odyssey was one of the better AC games I have played even though it was just huge (sometimes I get tired of a game that has me doing most of the same stuff for over 100 hours, but not this time). Trophies are strait forward, but there is 1 missable in the Atlantis DLC to watch out for. Looking forward to playing Valhalla even more than before as this revitalized my interest in the AC series, of course I hit my quote on them already this year so maybe next year. The Good The combat is very flushed out and fun, also no issues with climbing...mostly. Character had a great personality. Greece was awesome to wander around and loved the Mythology Great voice acting. Revitalized my interest in the AC games again. The Bad Strung on a bit long and there was maybe too much to do. The First Blade DLC was pretty bland. The Ugly Nothing really unless you just don't like AC games and this one is pretty polished. Edited April 14, 2021 by Grotz99 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Copanele Posted April 15, 2021 Share Posted April 15, 2021 Congrats for AC Odyssey! That was a behemoth of a game. Overall I liked it also (played as Alexios though) but it had some nasty little things that annoyed me. Specifically : On 4/14/2021 at 1:04 AM, Grotz99 said: The story starts off well enough, but basically boils down to taking out a cult who threatens you and your family, which follows the usual AC formula of finding and assassinating them. Although the main story is still pretty well done and all the side quests have some neat stories and are actually all voice acted (honestly never got tired of Kassandra's accent). They still unfortunately try to shoehorn in some of the present time story and this is more apparent in the Atlantis DLC (more on that later). For me, it was like it broke the immersion of actually playing a game during those times in one of my favorite times in history. They really need to drop the present time story stuff in these games once and for all (haven't played Valhalla yet so not sure if it still has some). That EXACT part is what annoyed me in Odyssey. Seriously they need to drop or minimize the stupid present time story. Unity did it best, as weird as it sounds, since you only had interaction with the present time at the beginning of the game and after that you were 100% in the French Revolution. Better prepare, because Valhalla does it too and abit worse at some points. Other than that, yeah Odyssey is a solid game. Probably one of the few AC Games where I didn't use fast travel extensively just because the world was too damn beautiful not to travel via horse. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Grotz99 Posted April 16, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted April 16, 2021 (edited) Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten DX Platinum #100 Ultra Completionist Time to Completion: 3 years 1 month Platinum Date: April 6 2021 So you finally hit 100 platinums and chose this rarely known game for it....why? For the longest time, I have always been a sucker for tower defense games since playing custom Warcraft 3 TD maps (elemental defense was solid). There is something about the strategy involved of perfectly placing the right combination of towers on a map that will automatically shoot and stop hordes of enemies from getting from point A to B. To some, this might seem a bit boring, it's just running simulations. For the longest time it was about just placing towers in the right spots to maximize damage and upgade them. Later it evolved into placing towers to counter specific types of enemies, along with mobile heroes which can gain their own levels and move around to help with the towers, tower skill trees and spells/abilities you can use on the battlefield. The core concept never changed but the strategies started to vary greatly in these type of games. For me, it caused a sort addiction to complete a level, tweaking the placements of towers by 1 square or changing upgrade orders until you don't let a single enemy through. These are not popular types of games, but it's one I've always had fun playing so I chose one of them that is more rare for my #100 platinum...not to mention a neat looking trophy icon and name ?. The other strange thing about this platinum is it is more rare on PSN profiles than Sony PSN. So what is this game about? You play as a magic wielder Azra, who lives in a world wrought by plague and eventually contract the plague yourself. This sends you into a hole which makes you end up in what they call the Half Way World and from there she learns that saving that world will save millions of lives (or something like that, honestly this game isn't about the story). Along the way she finds some companions to help fight by her side and have some witty banter with, who also act as her "towers" to help defend her as she makes her way through the Half Way World. Each level has different layouts and you use your allies as immobile towers to help fight off all the evil monsters. The characters all have their own typical roles: berserker, tank, mage, priest, archer and dragon. You COULD recruit more than one of each as you get to towns, but if you are going for the platinum, you can't do that while going for 180/201 stars....so most of the game you are stuck with the original cast. About the last 10 stars of the 180 get really tricky to get through and involve letting 0 enemies through even while your characters are maxed out. Once you get to 180/201 stars, it's time to recruit 5 more of each roll and end this thing!....Except they start at level 40 so you need to grind a little, after gaining about another 10 stars and levels with them. Most of the xp comes from obtaining a star the first time and your original crew already sucked up most of those even after they were max level. Luckily they were nice enough to add an option in the menu to increase xp gain by 300% and it does not void trophies. The last few stars are really about placement, builds, gear, slowing the game to like 1/2 speed to spam spells and hoping it doesn't freeze on you. I'm guessing this is where people get frustrated most. It happened usually when a character died and I would instantly slow down the game to get them back out there asap on specific maps. I think in the settings, turning off combat numbers and turning particles down to 0% helped. I promise it's not that bad... Other than what seems like a laundry list of issues with the game (not bad really until the last 10%), it is a great TD game with plenty of challenge. A lot or the challenge came from having a set amount of characters to use, which otherwise honestly wouldn't provide much of a challenge in this game. I was never able to finish it on PC and decided to really push for it during the Ultra Rare Completion challenge and for my #100 platinum. How it is more rare on here than on the Sony PSN is anyone's guess, but there are only about 300 owners on here, we'll see if it stays UR now... The Good Fun limited dialogue Challenging TD game with a range of builds The Bad Had to farm some xp for the new recruits after getting to 180 stars, but that is if you want the trophy (thank you 300% xp option) The Ugly Near the end when you have 30 characters on the screen, it starts to get laggy and sometimes freeze Update: Not sure when I'll feel like writing about the other game I finished or some of the DLCs I did, so I might as well put a quick update. I'll probably end up finishing a lot of these around the same time the way things are going. This will clear way to play The Banner Saga on my PS4 when I need to be in the other room and start up Yakuza 3 on PS5. Playing: Demons Souls (PS5) - Just finished NG+ and waiting for my friend to finish cleaning up some stuff then it's off to NG++ to finish getting the last 3 spells I need for the platinum...which still means beating at least half the bosses. 428 Shibuya Scramble (PS4) - Just beat the main story in this game the other night and got the true ending last night. There is just some post game extras to finish up. The Outer Worlds DLC: Murder on Eridanos (PS4) - Actually playing this on my PS5 and OMG does it load faster and maybe look better? I already really liked the game and they decided to throw in a murder investigation type DLC which is exactly what I like. Probably finish this up soon. The Mysteries of Little Riddle (Blue Toad Mysteries) (PS3) - Decided to pull the trigger on the rest of the game's chapters before the ps3 store closes. It's a cute little investigation game with some quick puzzles to solve, but apparently I'm not quick enough usually. Maneater (PS5) - Not sure what to say about this, figured it would be fun to start when I was a little drunk and honestly at that stage, it was. Looking like a derpy flopping shark on the beach who apparently moves faster than people can run is entertaining. If you are looking for a recommendation for a TD game on PS4, I would choose Defense Grid 2. Edited April 16, 2021 by Grotz99 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJ_Radio Posted April 18, 2021 Share Posted April 18, 2021 A lot of unfinished games on your trophy profile. Stuff like Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and God of War 2018 that are overall easy platinums are unfinished. Not a bad list though, my OCD and perfectionist/completionist traits would go bonkers if my account was sitting at 59.33 percent completion. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted April 18, 2021 Author Share Posted April 18, 2021 (edited) 2 hours ago, AJ_Radio said: A lot of unfinished games on your trophy profile. Stuff like Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and God of War 2018 that are overall easy platinums are unfinished. Not a bad list though, my OCD and perfectionist/completionist traits would go bonkers if my account was sitting at 59.33 percent completion. First of all...digging the new avatar icon whatever. There are many easy trophies to get and I have some goals to bring it down, but when I started this venture I knew I wouldn't go hard at earning trophies if I didnt enjoy the games. Anything I add though I try to knock out the most i can, some I'll save for later (not a big fan of having to play through the game multiple times in a row if its long). When I started to hunt a few years ago, it started at 37%. I think I made a post somewhere about how it's like playing mario kart and if feels better and more fun moving up the ranks from the rear using awrsome items rather than trying to keep first holding a banna worrying about when the next blue shell is coming. Can you tell where I started to hunt by looking at my account? I thought about making a fresh account, but I liked all my history from the past 10 years. Gow was a game I borrowed a while back from a friend. I can now go back to it since I got the PS5 ps plus collection but we'll see. Honestly I'd rather revisit the dark souls games or something else on my list, actually tempted to play demon souls on ps3 after playing the PS5 version. Edited April 18, 2021 by Grotz99 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted April 23, 2021 Author Share Posted April 23, 2021 Time for a quick and dirty update since I've been spending some time cleaning up some DLC and other games. Maquette Platinum #101 All Done! Time to Completion: 1 week 1 day Platinum Date: April 6 2021 This was a quick little puzzle game on the PS5 that came free with PS Plus. The puzzles took some time to figure out and actually understand how the world works that is within itself that is within itself again....and again....and so on, like a Russian nesting doll. There is a sort of story as you go through the game, but nothing to write home about. The speed runs require pretty precise movement, missing a jump or 2 can be what misses it and you have to make sure to skip the cutscenes since they count. Maneater Platinum #103 Platinum Time to Completion: 1 week 3 days Platinum Date: April 20 2021 Another free PS Plus game for PS5. This one was pretty silly as you swim around as a shark eating everything and everybody, clearly the oceans garbage truck. It takes place in a swamp that is apparently a vacation destination with resorts and a golf course, but is also crawling with swamp people and their boats looking to catch you for a bounty. The best part about this game was figuring out how to flop around on the shore like a little derpy shark that moves faster than people can run, in order to gobble them up. Even fully upgraded the end boss of the game was actually gave a little challenge, otherwise nothing else really was. ?The Foundation and Altered World Events DLC With the full edition of Control becoming available to PS5 on PS Plus, it meant that I got the DLC for free to work on as well. (really got my money's worth this last month out of PS Plus) These were neat to play through as they added a couple new elements and I forgot how fun the actual game play was in this game. I enjoyed the Altered World Events more, as it had a bit more mystery around what was actually going on and included some more problem solving for the boss type fights. ?Outer Worlds DLC Murder on Eridanos Since I had the season pass, this was another great excuse to jump back into this game. I ported my save over to the PS5 because I wanted to see how it ran on there and if you read my last review, the load times were horrendous, but not anymore! I knew I spent all this time and money getting a PS5 for a reason. The game even ran smoother than on the PS4. In any case enough of my gloating, this takes place on floating island like world above a planet that is home to where all the booze in the game comes from. More strange side stories and a even stranger main quest line, but I won't go into them since it'll spoil the story, if even a little, and if you are a mystery fan like me, you know you don't want that. I will say that both DLCs for this game were worth the season pass price and add a decent amount of content and story. ?Blue Toad Murder Files: The Mysteries of Riddle Little Time to Completion: 10 years 10 months Completion Date: April 23 2021 I played the first episode (of 6) back when I first got PS Plus on the PS3 and they gave the first episode for free. When it looked like Sony wanted to close the PS3 store, I took inventory (check higher in this thread) of all the things I might want to buy on PS3 before it closed. This was one of the first things I noticed as I am a fan of mystery and puzzle games...and it sat on my profile with 5/37 trophies that I can easily acquire. I decided to buy the rest of the game for $10 and give it a spin again. It is not a very serious mystery game, but some of the puzzles gave a little bit of a challenge the first time around, especially if you were going for a gold reward in time. Rather than quit and restart each time I didn't get gold, I just played through the chapters twice, first blind and then the second time to aim for gold on all puzzles. The story throughout the game evolved to be interesting but figuring out who the culprit was at the end of each chapter wasn't too much of a challenge. Update: As you might have noticed, I skipped over platinum 102, but I wanted to save that for it's own post as it is Demons Souls on the PS5, which I had a lot of fun with and now wondering if I should play it on the PS3 since it is so fresh. With all these games cleaned up, I have set the stage for me to dive into the wonderful world of Yakuza again with Yakuza 3, it's been in shrink wrap for about a year so that was a wake up call to keeping my spending limited this year for games, but I already have ideas of what I want for the PS5...especially if they are coop. The extra content in 428: Shibuya Scramble is longer than I thought so I'm still wading through that as well in between. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grotz99 Posted May 20, 2021 Author Share Posted May 20, 2021 (edited) Demon's Souls Platinum #102 Slayer of Trophies Time to Completion: 1 month 2 weeks Platinum Date: April 18 2021 It's been a month since I've platinumed this game and have gotten pretty busy to post this, but the game is still very fresh in my mind. Being about 11 years since my noob self poked a toe into the original version on my PS3, I can say I was a lot more ready for it this time around. I'm not sure what stopped me the first time, but it was hard to peel me away from it this time. The biggest thing holding me back from finishing quicker was waiting for my friend to be online so we can coop, I finished the first playthrough about 50% solo before realizing how much more fun it was to coop. Before I go into my experience with the game, I'll explain my silly build. Rather than go the tank and spank build with a lot of armor and a giant sword, I went the "pansy" dex build using a shield. I say pansy because you can use a bow to the full advantage and cheese a lot of bosses. I honestly just liked the mobility, but man did getting hit hurt, I think by the end I was even vitality with dexterity and a just enough magic stats to learn spells (more about my hatred of the spells in that game later). Although I did end up using a bow a lot later on, it really did compliment my decoy....I mean friend since he was heavy armor with a 2 hander. Sometimes I would put on the ring that pulled aggro so he could whack things in the back. Since most people know about this game by now, I'm going to skip to more of the highlights for me and did I mention how gorgeous this game was, no, well it looks amazing and runs so smoothly. My first playthrough was pretty blind except looking up things not to do, like using boss souls on yourself or what the hell tendency was. With that in mind, after killing the first boss I wanted to try to keep everything white tendency (this was before I started to play this with my friend and we found easy ways to sway it) so I went up to the top of the stairs in the hub and dropped down to a sub level then jumped off to kill myself. When I went back up to retrieve my first pile of souls I got from the first boss run, they were stuck on the sub level and there was no way to get them and safely get back down so they were lost....great start right? Honestly though, unless I wanted to start with magic off the back, this wasn't a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but still made me bitter and I learned to spend first...die later. As I made my way through the game and clearing the first boss of each world, I started to join up with my friend for some fun coop action. He was having some trouble with the flame demon (probably the hardest boss in the game, I think there is a harder one for my build), that I ended up soloing and killing after 2 tries....with a bow, but ran out of arrows when it was at 10% hp left. Not sure why, but it was harder with the both of us, even though I was mostly just shooting arrows at it. I think it was my friend getting smacked for 2/3 his HP each time since our stats sucked. We COULD have come back after easier bosses, but he really needed the nice giant sword from the start of the next area. Also, arrows were not cheap when you're first starting out and your carrying weight wasn't great. Eventually though we killed it. Now comes to where I needed help, the 2nd boss in world 3, the Maneaters. I soloed them somehow the first time through, but in NG+ they were a pain. These for some reason had a lot of RNG for me, I would either get close to killing the first before the 2nd came down or it would fly around all over the place biding time, not to mention rolling around on that skinny bridge with no guard rails, seriously who designed place? With the 2 of us, this became a lot more manageable. After that was the fun PVP fight, which I soloed the first time and did not know I was fighting someone as they were so bad. I think it's silly that you can coop that fight since it becomes a 2v1. To add insult to injury the 3rd time around I used the scraping spear against people. This thing would take durability off their equipment and weapons, enough hits and it'll break their stuff. My friend watched as I let the opponent backstab me for 0 damage since their weapon was broken, I know I'm a dick and to add insult to injury we got paired up against the same person twice in a row. Some highlights from coop... So when you can coop and put in each others codes, it makes changing tendency really easy since we were able to fight each other as black phantoms since we stayed around the same level and some places don't get invaded as much, except by us. Of course while doing this in the tower, I got summoned to the 3rd boss fight on accident and beat the poor bastard to get the silly magic hat. While playing coop though, I swear you get invaded constantly, even by 2 people at the same time, which actually made it pretty fun to PVP, but balance was sometimes awful. Remember when I mentioned not liking magic in this game (I know it's really good, maybe too good), well getting attacked by 2 people that are full magic users is the worst. They would just run up and both use the AOE fire attack then bam you're dead. Of course this went the other way as well as prepping an ambush was pretty easy to take out the first person to step through a doorway first. Anyways that's enough of me rambling on about my experience in this game, but I had a ton of fun with it, probably more since I had someone to coop with. Maybe I'll go back to the PS3 version now that I know the bosses and see how it holds up. I would also not be opposed to new DLC for this version... The Good Made it pretty easy to coop Runs smoothly and graphics are great Didn't deviate too much from the original from what I saw and heard No more annoying trophies that requiring grinding materials to level up each stone type weapon The Bad Found the grass farming and spamming pretty annoying, especially in PVP. I like the change they made to the souls games to use a flask with limited heals for more challenge. The Ugly Honestly can't think of anything, game never glitched or crashed for me, except maybe some of the item animations Update: Coming up on June, which means that Gaming by Numbers will be starting and I'm trying to line up games for that. So far, looking through my account there are some games I can definitely finish up, but a lot don't really excite me. I used this event last year to do some nice trophy cleanup, but it'll be minimal for that this year I think. Since it doesn't require new games, I'll be starting some next week, just trying to figure out which ones...I'm really at a backlog traffic jam. Of course I picked up the Mass Effect Trilogy to add to that. I wanted to start a Far Cry game (I have Primal, 4, 5, and New Dawn), but realized that the MP trophies might be a pain and will need boosting, still might play one anyways. Here are some I'm thinking of starting: The Banner Saga (most likely) Mass Effect Yakuza 4 Judgement Far Cry Primal (also maybe 4) Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep Beyond: Two Souls Katamari Demacy World of Final Fantasy Tales of Vesperia Tokyo Xanandu Ex Exist Archive One Piece: Unlimited World God Eater Resurrection Gravity Rush 2 Dark Souls 3 (Started a long time ago, but will restart) I have a pretty big RPG itch right now that might need scratching, might not even be for the event and there's a chance I won't complete the RPG game 100%, but I still want to play something. There's also smaller games I can start, but they won't take long to knock out if I need to. I'm also on the path to knock down my unearned trophies to under 5k, which is why I should try to pick some incomplete things from my list. Once I have something more definite, I'll post my list for the event here that I'll aim to tackle. Edited May 20, 2021 by Grotz99 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJ_Radio Posted May 22, 2021 Share Posted May 22, 2021 On 5/20/2021 at 11:29 AM, Grotz99 said: Far Cry Primal (also maybe 4) I wasn't a fan of this. Primal basically took what Far Cry 4 did and put the timeline to the prehistoric era. But if you enjoy Far Cry as a series you should be able to get into this one. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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