MagJamz
Oracle Knight
Riki want to play with Monado. :3
Posts: 119
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Post by MagJamz on Jul 13, 2015 0:01:27 GMT -5
I've just finished Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. What have I done...?
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Aug 29, 2015 20:17:01 GMT -5
Just finished Atelier Escha & Logy. Good god, that was surprisingly fantastic. Having played Rorona and Totori (the former I couldn't get into at all, the latter I got to year 3 and lost interest in), this was a huge improvement. I loved it. My feelings toward it reminds me how inaccurate numerical ratings are. It's not a 10/10. It's not in my list of favourites. And yet, much like Trails in the Sky, it resonated with ME in a way that it might not with others. It has flaws, but I (bolded, italicized, and any other way I can emphasise that single letter) found it an experience that will shine in my memories. How can I put those feelings into numbers?
Anyway, Atelier Shallie is next. Then probably P4G (free Vita TV, memory card, and Freedom Wars/P4G from a friend), then hopefully Trails in the Sky SC will be out. Then Zestiria. Then Sen no Kiseki. Then Persona 5. Then... Oh god... Berseria will be out before I can climb this mountain...
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Oct 9, 2015 20:56:21 GMT -5
So while playing Shallie somebody gifted me Grandia 2 on steam. Finished it in 4 days, which should say how much I enjoyed it (~28 hours to complete). Super short, but strongly recommended. Makes a great palate cleanser between massive JRPGs, particularly since there's almost no side content (or, in other words, it's a straight-forward romp that has very little down-time).
Finished Shallie as well. I'm a little sad that even when I see people talking about Atelier, this one is rarely brought up. Liked E&L better, but still has an overall good time with this one. I'm more than ready for a break from Atelier though.
And now the fun time where I can't finish any RPGs until Zesty's launch, so no more RPGs until then...
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Derman
Oracle Knight
I still don't have a knife tag on my golden birth knife
Posts: 194
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Post by Derman on Nov 3, 2015 16:19:59 GMT -5
The Beginner's Guide! I never thought I could spontaneously throw 8€ to a game, finish it under 2 hours and be so satisfied. It even beat the pizza I ate the same day. It was like reading a great short story. I recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in game design or creative work in general.
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Post by Lee Traxin on Nov 11, 2015 13:07:08 GMT -5
Just finished Bioshock Infinite, and did a full run through of the Ratchet and Clank HD Collection. Fun times. I also went through All 4 One, and that was a train wreak.
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MagJamz
Oracle Knight
Riki want to play with Monado. :3
Posts: 119
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Post by MagJamz on Nov 17, 2015 21:23:21 GMT -5
Finished Tales of Zesty and Legendia a week ago. Now to finish Dragon Quest 8. So much fun~
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Post by Hiro the Half-Elf on Nov 20, 2015 23:45:19 GMT -5
Last game I beat was... Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2. Heh, picked this one up for $10 at FYE a while ago. I'm not usually one for licensed anime games but... I've been having this craving for one lately, you know? I really wanted one of the DBZ Budokai games, but they're all really expensive. Anyways, this turned out to be worth way more than what I paid for it! I was never really big into Naruto, but my roommate is a secret Narutard from the olden days (they left that world before Shippuden started), so we had a pretty good time going through this game together. As usual, I played, he watched, we both laughed. First thing to note: It's an incredibly simplistic fighting system. For basic controls, there's one melee combo button, one button to throw shuriken (for ranged characters, this is their main combo), your typical jump/airdash, and a single special move per character. Combos are all done with just one button and tilting the stick to switch which of your five combos you use. The main gimmick is that if you tap the block button as you get hit, you warp behind your opponent (uses a bit of bar) and can attack immediately. Naturally, your opponent can do the same even after you do this, so it's similar to Guard Impact in Soul Calibur II and III, but easier to perform and it flows more naturally into the combat (that it uses up bar forces both players to control when and where they charge up- knocking an opponent down lets you grab some of their bar in the form of floating orbs and charging will draw these orbs straight to you, Onimusha-style). If you haven't guessed yet, the main draw here isn't using a large arsenal of moves to create combos, but using the different timings of the few attack patterns you have to keep your opponent off-balance. Play the game for a while and you get a feel for the attack timings of all the characters- when you have to tap to do the substitution technique, where it's easier to block and wait out the attacks, and which characters are easier to substitute against than others. It's a pretty simple mechanic, but it's pretty satisfying in practice since characters vary considerably in attacks despite all using the same basic inputs. I have to say, the game does a better job of bringing the manga to life than the anime. Where the anime is drab and poorly animated a lot of the time, the game has a great cel-shaded engine with spot-on character models (though sometimes the mouth movements get a bit odd, especially as the dub is not synced to the lip flaps AT ALL. It gets real Hong Kong flick at some points, even in the -opening video to the game-). Especially good are the boss fights in the story mode, which use a bunch of QTEs (like a lot of other shounen anime fighters) and cutscenes to recreate the sort of over-the-top fights you come to shounen anime for. I especially liked the showdown between the vampire ninja brothers, not least because Elder Brother is a coolguy and Sausage remains a scrub even when you win the fight. It's a game by CyberConnect2, infamous evil video game company that made .hack, and it shows- they reused the email system from the .hack games verbatim- Naruto will get letters from his friends and you can write back to them to raise your Social Link or just trash-talk them for eating too much. Your choice, though usually Naruto will end up calling all of his friends fat no matter what you do. The CC2 influence shows in the music, too, which is a lot of sad RPG violins and dramatic music, and... it just doesn't really work. It's a pretty colorful, fun, spry fighting game, but the somber strings just bring it down. It's partially due to Shippuden taking itself too seriously as a property, but it's also CC2 taking their Ninja Friendship RPG too seriously. It could really use some rocking guitars to pump up the player, like the first series of the show, or the older Ultimate Ninja games. Also indicative of Cyberconnect2 games is the endless running through completely empty fields with a party of four characters all spouting meaningless text bubbles at all times. There aren't any random battles or anything, but they make you run through lots and lots of screens which are in reality just hallways with nice wallpaper (mostly the forest wallpaper, like in the Pokemon anime) connecting the various battlefields. So like FFXIII, but without the dead ends that have items in them. You have to do a lot of walking to get to the different story scenes, especially as there are a lot of sections where you will walk somewhere, have a cutscene, then switch control to a different character and -walk the same path back to the same area- to have a different cutscene with the new character. It's not until you clear all the story stuff that you get the ability to warp between the various areas (and there's not many- they're mostly just padded out with lots of screens of hallways), and it's at that point it becomes some sort of Naruto role-playing game. But, ah, man, just thinking about stepping into Naruto's ninja shoes is tiring me out, so I think I'll skip on by. Another positive: It's got a good-sized cast (at about 38 characters), with a good balance of heroes and villains, teens and adults. The next game in the series is more than packed to the gills, with 97 characters (many of whom are -extremely esoteric- if you haven't watched all of Shippuden), so I'm glad this one, at least, was reasonably-sized. IF you like Naruto at least a little, you'll probably find your favorite characters in here. Maybe you'll find some new ones! I avoided this series for a long time because I wasn't into the franchise and especially not Shippuden, but it was a really pleasant surprise. And now that I've finished the story and my roommate is out of the country for a while... I can put the ninjas down and relax for a while. Phew! [ actually, I had a pretty amusing idea for a naruto roguelike this morning that I might actually want to work on. it sounded pretty fun augh no more ninjas please] EDIT: Does the spoiler tag not work anymore? I wanted to put most of this giant block of text under one, but oh well. I guess you guys have to deal with it.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Nov 22, 2015 23:25:00 GMT -5
FYE's still around? I thought that place had gone the way of Blockbuster for some reason. I've heard the Naruto games aren't that shabby, surprisingly. I'm always wary of video games based off TV shows.
I finished Puzzle & Dragons Z, finally. It's a good, brainless commute-to-work time killer. The gameplay, as one would expect of P&D, was very satisfying, but I think I could have done without the silly dialogue. A minor complaint, though, since the story was pretty minimal. Props to the game for coming up with the stupidest reason I think I've ever encountered for being evil, though. "I really liked this stray cat in the neighborhood that disappeared one day when I was a kid, and the evil villain promised me he would help me find the stray cat if I joined him, so, yeah, helping him destroy the world."
I mean, I like cats and all, but what
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Post by Hiro the Half-Elf on Nov 23, 2015 16:57:12 GMT -5
Yeah, FYE had been having a store-clearance sale for like three or four years, but all of a sudden they're bustling.
Why? Anime, ponies, and pop! vinyl figurines. It seems the fandom classes rediscovered it as a place to buy cheap merchandise and overpriced DVDs, and they're doing their best to milk these types. Somehow they managed to cling to life. Everyone I've spoken to who isn't into fandom has no idea they're alive at all, but I see lots of people wearing FYE-bought Bleach and MLP shirts and the like.
The day before Halloween, I went in to buy that Naruto game and the cashier was cosplaying as not!Big BossVenom Snake, from the new Metal Gear.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Jan 3, 2016 17:30:40 GMT -5
Pokemon Diamond!
With that, I have exactly one game left--Pokemon Omega Ruby--to beat before I've played and beaten every main game released in the States.
I'll give Green a go once I've got Omega Ruby down.
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Post by Lee Traxin on Jan 6, 2016 7:12:02 GMT -5
Cleared 'Senran Kagura: Estival Versus' yesterday. Got a bit confused with accessing the eighth day, due to owning a JPN copy, but figured it out. Definite purchase for me when the US PS4 version releases.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jan 11, 2016 15:27:57 GMT -5
Finished Undertale. I honestly don't get the massive praise it gets. It was good, but not the kind of good that makes me go, "This is the best game I've played all year".
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Derman
Oracle Knight
I still don't have a knife tag on my golden birth knife
Posts: 194
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Post by Derman on Jan 14, 2016 9:28:08 GMT -5
Finished Undertale. I honestly don't get the massive praise it gets. It was good, but not the kind of good that makes me go, "This is the best game I've played all year". I bought it as well. Got all the endings (I think). I hadn't been spoiled so the game was full of surprised and it made me laugh many times, which is surprisingly rare. It is an incredible game for sure, but way too overhyped. The fanbase is a bit crazy sometimes. To be honest, as a game I think it's worse than many others I've played this year, but as an experience it's one of a kind. It's like Stanley Parable etc. It does have a nice soundtrack though.
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Post by aifread on Feb 6, 2016 21:18:44 GMT -5
Finally finished Ys Celceta. The overworld exploration was incredibly well-done, on par with Metroidvania. But I still do not like the combat system from Seven, and fear Ys VIII will have the same problems. I'm not even sure if it's possible to have the Mega Man/Castlevania/Dark Souls-like boss patterns that the PC games had with the newer party system at this point; it seems like the two clash horribly. Some of the bosses seem capable of achieving that tough-but-fair design from the older games, but with stun-locks and erratic AI common and healing items easily abusable, it feels like no one is playing fair. I'm crossing my fingers that jump mechanics and a possible item overhaul will remedy some of this in Ys VIII, but I'm not holding my breath.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jun 22, 2016 3:45:20 GMT -5
Finished Persona 4:Golden the other day.
TL:DR: If you've played the original, Golden may be worth a try. If you haven't played Persona 4 yet, pick it up on PS2/PSN. (I wish I could scream this at people on the street like a crazy man).
Golden has more content than the base game, but the content varies in quality. Some of it is pretty good, but almost as much is boring/uninteresting. The added months (January/February) drag pretty hard. The biggest problem comes with the combat balancing, which I went over pretty extensively in the "currently playing" thread. I beat the game w/ a Black Frost that had 99 in every stat, with a party all at level 99 - no grinding (I fought the bonus boss in each dungeon AND had to search out some quest items, but I never once went out of my way for the sake of extra experience). The final boss' first form went down in two turns. Unfortunately this isn't a problem that can be addressed by switching the difficulty to hard - it's an issue that stems from the abundance of new features that the team didn't even try to balance.
In the end it's the old "quality v quantity" argument. Golden has MORE than Vanilla*, but the quality varies and actually interferes with some of what made Vanilla so great (the ending especially is a great example of how Golden changed the perfect ending of Vanilla in favour of an 'epilogue' which, while itself not bad or uninteresting, spoils the emotional finale). In contrast Vanilla Persona 4, like a well-edited novel, offers consistently top-tier content from start to finish.
I doubt I'll pick Golden over Vanilla in the future, but the experience has confirmed to me that Persona 4 is one of my favourite games. P5 can't come soon enough (got my CE pre-ordered and everything!)
* Vanilla finish time: 71 hrs, 23 m Golden finish time: 83 hrs, 5 m
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