Topic: What is the last game you beat? Thoughts/impressions?

[broodwars]

Nope that's real if you install the videos also as the streaming is unreliable. It takes up so much space they don't know compression has been invented. It's absurd, there is about 2 hours of footage, but it eats up more space than a Bluray at 77GB iirc.

Yep, and I think I know why the videos are so huge: you can collect 2 items every chapter that get reflected in extremely minor and disappointing ways in the TV episode that follows, but I never once saw the videos pause to branch. I suspect that there are 8 versions of all 4 episodes (For each Junction Point: 1 with no items, 2 with 1 item but not the other, and 1 with both items) relatively uncompressed in that 75 GB download.

[oohhboy]

I am pretty sure that the problem of video pausing when switching branches was solved years ago if you know, ever played Star Wars: Rebel Assault or any of it's kin. You really, really don't need four version of the same thing. It's straight up laziness and incompetence.

Reminds me of how much space Titianfall took up since it didn't compress the audio so that took up more space than the game or graphics. They then blamed the "Lack" of CPU power to decompress audio so they left it uncompressed to make it easier on the system. This when it was released on the PC which has an order of magnitude more power than the Xbox One.

[broodwars]

And I just remembered that you have to make a major choice before each TV episode that makes a big impact on that episode, so make that 8 different fully-rendered versions of each episode.

And I'm pretty sure video pausing during branching is still a thing to some extent. The BluRays for Beauty & the Beast & Lion King still do it for their additional musical numbers.

[oohhboy]

Considering it was solved back when CPUs ran at double digit MHz, it's a **** Blu-ray player. The concept isn't even hard, you see elements on Youtube everyday, you buffer a couple seconds before the switch then using that time to read the next track buffering that. No pause.

The only thing that would get in the way is some hardcore DRM, but even then, you wouldn't have to decode until that point, you can still read ahead or hide the switch with a fade out since you are filming custom content with this in mind. In-game cutscenes do it to hide loading and camera movement.

[Evan_B]

...Oh my god.

That is truly disgusting.

[azeke]

Ninja Gaiden II (NES VC on 3DS and on PC with retroachievements):


As usual with NES games, i usually beat them on 3DS first (usually on commute), then redo it for realsies on retroachievements emulator.

Achievements feel very organic almost like they were they there from the beginning. Set of achievements wants you to complete a level with full magic bar intact, which means you have to find hidden magic symbol in the level and then defeat the boss while still not using magic. And it feels so natural for the game because the game was clearly designed to be beatable without using magic.

Well, almost. NGII new gimmick -- trailing phantom ninjas seem almost mandatory for flying bosses because you can't hit them without hurting yourself but your phantoms can. Phantoms don't use magic so they don't count.

Achievement for the first level also requires full health, which makes it one of the harder ones to get, ironically. But it's first level and it takes like a minute so it's okay.

Otherwise NGII's gameplay doesn't stray away too far from original -- don't stop for nothing, run past enemies, memorize spots where enemies respawn and methodically dispatch them 1 by 1, abuse screen border movement to despawn enemies and if push comes to shove -- use damage boost and invincibility frames.

Level design is very gimmick heavy -- every other level has something to it. It's either ice or running water or wind or darkness with lightning showing the way.

Many of the "annoying enemies" still can be dispatched by simply stopping, ducking and slashing. And now you don't even have to duck to kill birds. The annoyance comes from meticulous placement of scores enemies designed to send you into abyss unless you memorize how move through the barrage of enemies right.

Final stretch is easier than in 1, where you had to redo entire chapter from the start if you lost to one of the final boss' phases. Now you "just" have to redo the last level and don't have to redo boss phases from the start.


Her Story (Steam):
Games are toys, products of (industrial) design and the most important element of games are their mechanics: How was this constructed? Why exactly this or that part done in this particular way? What payoff developer expected based from these deliberate design decisions?

Because each interview is progressively opening up more and more pieces of truth (like rising the intensity in an action game in later levels) developer wants to kinda gate late content and this game it is achieved by sorting found clips by date and showing you only five clips on each request. Thus the most generic requests will just net you the earliest interviews and later stuff gets cut out.

Ending mechanic where player himself can decide when to end the game is quite interesting and there even a new game + of sorts where you can keep playing on to unlock the complete database.

Design wise -- very smart.

Plot twist itself is rather trite and kinda dead horsey (it's basically Prestige movie without Tesla magic (btw book was quite good too)), but it's execution with acting and writing is ingenious, especially considering inherent non-linearity of the format developer chose. Footage has a lot of details and actress' acting is nuanced enough to give out hints through repeated speech patterns or deliberate discrepancies.

There is no tomfoolery where certain clips are artificially hidden from you to keep intrigue up for longer: for example there is a request that is rather obvious in retrospect (just type game title) that will basically show you the gist of what and how happened. It's almost open-world in how free-form it is.

Overall: pretty cool. Sam Barlow continues to write the only interestingly told stories in videogames, while all others are content aping either movies or literature.

[Shaymin]

Re-beat 999 (DS) this weekend in anticipation of Zero Time Dilemma (refreshing myself on where the plot's going). As a standalone game, it's great, but as the first part of a trilogy it leaves a very thin hook to Virtue's Last Reward (luckily, Uchikoshi took that and ran with it).

There's definitely some points that I wished I could hit a giant OBJECTION! button, but the characters do eventually reach the same conclusion. And this is a game beatable in a couple of days, which I'm probably going to appreciate as I play the sequel.

[ShyGuy]

Gone Home Not as good as Dear Esther, the writing and focus was lacking. I really, really like the concept of walking around a "real world" house and exploring but by the end of my 4 hour play through, the seams were showing. At lot of nice details were put in, but I didn't feel compelled to care about the characters.

[Soren]

Adventures of Pip [Wii U] - Middle-of-the-road platform game has an interesting concept but it's not enough to hold it together. Changing between sprites is fun, but gets tedious fast. The game is relatively short which is a plus. Very few times do levels wear out their welcome and there's enough of a challenge to keep platformer veterans engaged. A few challenges are pretty entertaining. Boss battles are mostly messy slogs where you try and figure out the full pattern before you die and then execute it to perfection on your second/third try. Presentation is very weak, slightly amateurish (seriously, no credits at the end) and lacks polish. If you've played every other platformer on Wii U and this game is on sale, give it a shot. Otherwise, plays the nearly dozen better indie platformers on Wii U first.

Star Fox Guard [Wii U] - This game is better than Star Fox Zero. There, I said it. Yeah it's an eShop game and yes it's very low budget and it shows in the presentation but I felt engaged during the main story missions. The bosses offered a nice twist on the gameplay and even as I was playing solo I felt enough of a challenge going from the GamePad to the TV screen. Finished all the main story missions in under 4 hours so it's perfect for short bursts. Highly recommended. 

[rygar]

Kid Icarus: 3D Classics

I finished my play through last night and got the middle ending. I had played the original only once, and very briefly, so this was really my first experience with the game. I enjoyed it quite a bit. The platforming aspects have a nice difficulty balance. I died frequently, but no level was frustrating to get through. I finished Ghosts n Goblins and Castlevania recently, and the lack of save states in Kid Icarus reaffirmed how much longer those two games would taken to finish if you had to start the stage over after every death. I didn't mind it with Icarus, because it would probably be too easy a game with in-stage saves. It did limit my ability to play around other people though (which is one of the main attractions of the 3DS for me) because I really needed to get into a grove at times. Being able to save in-stage alleviates a lot of the need for that. It took me 6:40 at an average of 16 minutes a session, compared with 5:33/11 and 4:51/12 for GnG and Castlevania respectively.

The combat was pretty easy, particularly the bosses, but the action-rpg elements add a little depth, as do the scaled endings. I didn't even realize that was a goal until after I finished the game and looked it up online. I will eventually play through it again to get the better endings, but I have some other action platformers to play first, and I also own Kid Icarus 2 and Uprising, and want to give those a whirl.

I'm happy I tried out the first couple levels of Uprising before finishing this game. It made the change in game style on the final level seem a great set up for the sequel.

Other than Pit's jumping mechanics, my favorite part of the game by far is the new 3D background art. It takes the game's original classical Greek theme and infuses it with a renaissance art style (for example, Hades seems more Dante than Ovid), which obviously itself was heavily influenced by antiquity. It really gives the game a unique look. I would love to see more NES classics get the same treatment.

[azeke]

Ico (PS2):

You can definitely feel the influence of this game through later games. It left the mark big enough to inspire (better) games like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and parts of modern Zelda even.

Castle setting reminds me of Gormenghast and maybe starting chapters of Song of Ice and Fire where Bran is climbing the roofs. And original Devil May Cry. I wonder if (stupid) decision to put jump button on triangle for western release was because Sony wanted to make it consistent with Ico which was released that year too. Very few games have a jump button on triangle.

The ending is very weird in a way that i actually like. It must have been some end of the year for PS2 owners playing Ico and MGS2 back to back.

The game overall is kinda boring even if it's not that long. The (deliberate) emptiness of the world and repetition of puzzles caused by a girl getting lost and dying set in quite fast by the end.


Still, pretty cool game for the time i guess. Though that resolution is inexcusable even for 2001 -- i played PS1 games in higher resolution.

[Order.RSS]

Just beat Advance Wars for GBA.



So obvs I'm hella late to this title (only a decade and a half or so...) but was interested because I remember it getting rave reviews back in the day. Plus as someone who likes turn based games and stuff like Age of Empires, this was a no-brainer.


Impression though? Eh, a little mixed. It looks nice, music is okay, and there's a lot of units and ways to give them terrain advantages. That said, it moves pretty slowly and I hate myself for never checking to see if you can turn off battle animations. The campaign is pretty lighthearted which I suppose is part of the appeal.


The last mission though, yeesh it was just an outright battle of attrition. Slowly whittling away at the enemy's troops while they keep respawning new ones. Took me 30 in-game days which translates to several hours. On a handheld pick-up-and-play strategy game!
Maybe I'm just crap at strategizing but I found that neither full-out offenses, nor playing very defensively really worked very well. You block yourself in annoying ways when there's too many units closeby.

Rating: 6.5/10. It's a decent timewaster, but I'm not sure I believe the hype. Sami should be in Smash Bros. though, her design is cool.

[oohhboy]

Sub Level Zero (Steam)

It's your 6DOF shooter in the traditions of Descent. It even looks a little like the old game too and has some intentionally lower rez textures to complete the look. It's a Rogue-lite so you are dealing with perma-death. But not all is lost! As you pick up Nanites aka cash which is used to craft weapons it also acts as exp which unlocks more powerful upgrades that you can then craft and perks to choose in future games.

Unlocking additional ships is done by meeting goals like killing xxx enemies with a damage type. The more specialised ships are far more powerful than the default ship as by design it is a jack of all trades so it doesn't excel.

There are quite a few weapons I can see so far and each one is pretty unique. Machine guns, lasers, bombs, you name it, its probably in there somewhere.

Enemies are easy to identify which greatly accelerate the important part of the game which is killing them. Most enemies are pretty straight forward but some are just dicks to deal with as they have homing attacks, massive shotgun blasts, rapid fire, sniping or just plain explosive. Later levels have waves of them requiring some very heavy weapons.

The controls are fantastic working wonders with a flight stick and the combat is visceral. Its got loot, but you are not drowning in it like Borderlands where 100% of the loot might as well be useless, quick decisions can be made so you can move on.

Two nags is that it doesn't have an on screen map and that currently you can't look up crafting recipes which means you have to remember them. But it is continues to be worked on post release so things like these might get some looking at.

Highly recommended if you play this type of game.

There is another 6DOF shooter I played for a half hour called NeonXSZ. In comparison it plays like a mess as it overflows with statistics, dumps you into an open world without any proper guidance and the procedurally generated world is all over the place sticking you with enemies you can't scratch not to mention nondescript. Pages of instructions. Poor combat, slippery movement and a UI that needs to be more readable at a glance. It has a massive focus on grinding. I wanted to like this but the core gameplay element of movement is just done so poorly it is just unforgivable causing me to bounce right off. The Steam reviews are a bit suspect as they tend to give an undue amount of praise for something they only played for 2 hours or simply contradict themselves.

Re: Advanced Wars. Ref future games

You open up aggressively at the start of any map and expand as far as you can. Then prep for first contact making sure you are holding a choke point and/or are ready to trade space to absorb the the initial impact with the forces on hand. Once you stabilise, smash your way out of the front. When you breakout into open country and have cleaned up behind you the AI doesn't have much of a useful response as it trickles in lower quality replacement units in a disorganized fashion which gets worse as you advance so you can take them apart at your leisure. This applies to any map which you can build units.

Exploit the fact the AI doesn't know about combined arms which mean it doesn't organize it's troops into armies, doesn't have a long term plan and don't have units support each other even when they are together. All it does is maximise immediate damage which means it will disorganize itself to achieve that.

Also watch for transport helicopters trying to snipe your HQ.

Pre-placed unit maps are really puzzles, so not much to say there.

[azeke]

The Legend of Zelda (NES VC on 3DS):

I finally completed it.

Similarities between the first Legend of Zelda and The Binding of Isaac are obvious -- UI is almost identical:



BoI also takes some of the ideas of LoZ and builds new systems on top of it. LoZ has some special properties on hearts number: like sword beam is only active if you health is full. BoI goes one step further and doors that can only open if you have full health OR just one heart or a curse that boosts damage if you have half a heart (i.e. one hit away from dying) and so on.

It was kinda cool to play original game and retroactively recognize things that Binding of Isaac took, like one of the first bosses you encounter in Binding is actually one of the sub-bosses in the last dungeon of Zelda, and i knew of that just a week ago, because i obviously beat it only now. Spiders' (annoying) movement patterns are copied wholesale from LoZ. Some of the enemies can only be hurt from the back or the sides just like Zelda knights.

But this E3 i saw that this creative borrowing of ideas can go both ways because new Zelda game introduced yellow hearts which are the same as blue spirit hearts of The Binding of Isaac.

Okay so the game itself.

I've been trying to beat the game for years now. When i played on my original 3DS a few years back i managed to get to 8th dungeon -- and all by myself, without looking up anything which was and still is my big problem with all Zelda games (unintuitive puzzles gating my progression). I'd rather be left alone and look and wander and bomb random things rather than be stumped by a puzzle the logic of which i don't understand and get mad when i look up the solution. But then i lost 3DS and with it -- the game.

Obsessively playing Binding of Isaac for the last months and last E3 sale pushed me to buy it again and complete it.

I also had to look up where the last dungeon and this time i wasn't even angry when i saw the solution because i completely misunderstood "spectacle" in "spectacle rock" hint as a theater play and there was absolutely no way i would have gotten it by myself because i would have gone looking for things that look like theater stages instead of glasses. Still, 8 dungeons i found by myself -- that's the best ratio of any Zelda game i played so far.

Mages in the last dungeons were very annoying especially on that one room on the screenshot above where you have no space to move and dodge. I gotta admit i was spamming save-states on these rooms just to get through it.

The game unlocked second quest and i played it for some time and beaten two dungeons by inertia. 2nd dungeon placed in secret shop location was pretty cool -- i was surprised when i entered it wanting to buy a shield on cheap and discovered that they moved around all dungeons. But i don't think i will be coming back to it.

Still, cool game that inspired even better games. I kinda wished Zelda after that didn't shift the focus from action to puzzles that much, but it seems like new Zelda games is coming back to roots and is doing exactly that so i am excited.

Binding Of Isaac: Wrath of The Lamb: Eternal Edition: Not Rebirth, nor Afterbirth (Steam):


With 490+ hours, it is my second played game after TF2.

Though a good 100 of those hours is just me leaving this game to run idly on my work PC. I arrive to work at around 8:30 so i use that half an hour to start a run and if it's worth keeping i keep game's window open in the background while i do my work until lunch break. Few times i kept especially promising runs on the pause like that for the night to resume them on the next morning. And one time i kept the run on pause from friday to monday.

Still, what made me play this seemingly simple game for 400 hours, collecting all 99 achievements?

The Binding of Isaac morphed from rather simple gamejam Zelda tribute into mechanical monster, bottomless well of depth with numerous versions/editions, 10+ endings, hundreds of unlockable items and secrets, tens of trinkets, a set of tarots cards, dozen playable characters each with their own strategies and item synergies and numerous ways to abuse the engine.



On the surface it's all rather simplistic and it WAS that way back in 2008 when i bought this game initially. I started it and 45 minutes in, beat Mom. "Okay that was fun, i guess". 7 years later i randomly started playing it again, and oh man have they added some STUFF since.



When i came back i started to see how the game really works, first i realized that keys are the most important resource because they give you access to treasure room on each floor which are guaranteed to have an upgrade of sorts. Then i discovered wikis on the game and Platinum God site and oh man. It was like a abyss opening and day by day by day i was figuring out how to break the game further while it kept throwing new and new challenges at me.

After you beat Mom ten times you unlock new level with new boss, then beat it dozen times and you have two new chapters that require additional conditions to even enter, then yet another chapter beyond that and then finally the finale, the true real no-kidding-this-time ending. You need to beat penultimate chapter five times to unlock the item that allows to enter the final chapter.

And with each "final" boss game changes dramatically -- you unlock more beneficial power-ups, entire systems become available to you, metagame evolves into the sprawling mess of systems and synergies. After a certain number of "Mom kills" game reaches milestone where it activates new set harder enemies and bosses. And alternate characters! Metagame is vastly different for most of them which provides a satisfying variety:

• Magdalene simply tanks damage with her big health pool. But you can risk big and trade heart containers to devil in exchange for various devil items. But she also has crippling low speed so you need to be on it with your dodging constantly or find speed-up upgrades ASAP.
• Samson is an inverse of Maggy because he only has 1 heart but to make up for it he has an innate ability where your damage gets a temporary boost each time you kill an enemy. This trivializes bosses that spawn smaller enemies because you can get 4x damage by killing mooks first and then go ham on a boss itself.
• Judas has a very good power-up (Book of Belial) unlocked from the start which boosts your damage. Book of Belial also has a hidden synergy which increases the chance of Devil room appearing even if you take damage on the level.
• Cain has hidden Luck stat boosted up which generally gives you better unlocks and especially helps in arcade room where you can grind for pick ups.
• Blue Baby (???) doesn't have permanent heart containers which means if you lose a heart -- that's it. Game changes dramatically with blue baby because shops and tinted rocks that you can blow up for blue hearts become your main source for health. On the other hand, Blue Baby is probably has the most beneficial Deal with the Devil mechanic which arguably allows him to become overpowered glass cannon faster than any other character.
• Eve is probably one of the most ingeniously designed characters because you have to harm yourself on purpose to stay with only half of red heart to achieve cursed state where you have your damage boosted. This mechanic also synergizes with blue hearts system because you can use them as your your damage shield of sorts while keeping your red heart at .5. It is even beneficial to destroy all your red hearts completely and go completely broke with just blue hearts (like Blue Baby) because you can then stay cursed forever and not have to dodge red hearts in fear that they will replenish your HP and lift the curse.

"Harming yourself to become stronger" and sacrifice in general is a major theme of the game -- how far are you willing to go to reach the final boss? How much are you willing to sacrifice -- your health, your time? You arrive at final boss as some insane looking overpowered abomination -- but at what cost?



And finally -- Isaac himself who is at the beginning has all stats on average but sometime into the game he changes and gains potentially the most overpowered item in the game -- The Dice.

The Dice exposes yet another deep and abusable mechanic of BoI -- item pools. The Dice allows you to "reroll" items that you RNG gives you in treasure, secret, angel and devil rooms. So if you don't like what game has given you on a pedestal here? Use the dice to change it into something else that you haven't seen before. For the first level you have a chance to reroll item in treasure room twice giving you a chance to choose and pick between three potential items.

D20 item that you can get later gives you even more control over item pool because now you don't have to have item on a pedestal to reroll -- you can reroll randoms pickups that are just lying on the floor. Game gives you even more ways how to break the game with D20 than with D6 with synergies.

Eternal Edition:
Eternal edition is an official update to the game that adds hard mode. Apparently it is controversial because most players think it is way too hard. I think they're weird because as a reward for having to deal with very hard tanky regular enemies and bosses Eternal edition also gives you "eternal" white hearts like candies, which allows you to get more permanent health containers. This changes the balance between characters significantly. Characters who have low health as a handicap are not crippled by it so much because you can get more health if you're good at the game (and then trade all that health in to devil for deals anyway).

Reibrth:
This game is original Flash-based release, in the years than i haven't played it, creators have released revamped game on new engine with even more content and systems and even ported it to consoles (Wii U included).

I didn't wanted to buy it, because i didn't wanted to redo everything from the start, after spending so much time with original game. Still looking at some of the videos here and there it seems like Rebirth+Afterbirth is an even bigger monster. I WILL buy and play and complete that game too -- but some time later, now i need to rest from Isaac for a while.

TLDR:

Now imagine me playing this game till 4am and hearing THIS for the first time X-(

[Adrock]

I finally beat Paper Mario after putting it down for the past three months after moving. It still holds up after 15 years. I'm eager to start The Thousand Year Door, but I'm going to hold off for a bit. I'll probably finish Twilight Princess HD before tackling more of my backlog.

I admittedly abused the "create restore point" feature. It really helped when slogging through Dry Dry Desert and repeatedly fighting Amazee Dayzees to grind for experience which is pretty much the only way to do so since the game greatly discourages it through the leveling up system (e.g. regular enemies stop giving you experience once you hit a certain level).

The item system is, unfortunately, total bullshit. When I played the game on N64, I remember not having many of my best items by the end of the game because Mario can only carry 10 at a time and there's no store close to the end to claim items. I still remembered that after all these years so I was better prepared this time. Of course, I also was fully leveled up this time and had better badges which let me skip most of the enemy encounters in the final chapter so I was able to preserve many of my good items for Bowser. Sorry, [soplier]Bowser is the final boss[/soplier].

Overall, Paper Mario is just a very charming game that probably didn't get the praise or attention it deserved as an end of generation release. It's so good that it makes me detest Sticker Star even more and leaves me feeling a little empty about Color Splash.

[Order.RSS]

Re: Advanced Wars. Ref future games

You open up aggressively at the start of any map and expand as far as you can. Then prep for first contact making sure you are holding a choke point and/or are ready to trade space to absorb the the initial impact with the forces on hand. Once you stabilise, smash your way out of the front. When you breakout into open country and have cleaned up behind you the AI doesn't have much of a useful response as it trickles in lower quality replacement units in a disorganized fashion which gets worse as you advance so you can take them apart at your leisure. This applies to any map which you can build units.

Exploit the fact the AI doesn't know about combined arms which mean it doesn't organize it's troops into armies, doesn't have a long term plan and don't have units support each other even when they are together. All it does is maximise immediate damage which means it will disorganize itself to achieve that.

Also watch for transport helicopters trying to snipe your HQ.

Pre-placed unit maps are really puzzles, so not much to say there.

Thanks, will keep this in mind if I ever end up going back to it or another entry of the series!

[Soren]

BoxBoxBoy! (3DS) - 8.5/10

It's more BoxBoy with fewer tutorial stages. It's crazy how this series with just two games has now become comfort food gaming. It feels fun to drop in and clear a world and the close the 3DS lid and go about your day. The puzzles are fun and the final two worlds have very tough but rewarding puzzles. I approve of more BoxBoy.

Pocket Card Jockey (3DS) - 9/10

I haven't finished the game per se but I feel I can give an accurate assessment. Spoiler alert: it's really good! The solitaire games are fun by themselves but mixed with the strategic element of the horse race you can have either a total blast, a frustratingly unfair time, or both. Even with that it's fun to, again, fire up the 3DS and do a round on Growth Mode, another on Mature mode and then go about your day. It's a perfect handheld experience and everyone should play it. Go ahead.

[rygar]

 Pokemon X - Story Mode
 
 I finally finished my first play through of a pokemon game last weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed it. [Aside from the core monster-collecting theme] the gym aesthetics, music, and multi-level environments were my favorite aspects of the game. I also found a significant portion of the dialogue surprisingly amusing.
 
 My final team was greninja, venasaur, gardevoir, talonflame, ageislash, and xerneas. I also used sylveon a lot before switching to xerneas for story purposes, and used vivillon a ton too. I probably raised another dozen or so pokemon 10-20 levels. Overall, I enjoyed using gardevoir the most, although she was somewhat sidelined towards the end.
 
 I thought the load times were fantastic and I wish all my 3DS games would open this quickly. However, I was frustrated with how slow the game is in other areas. I don't know if this is necessary to make the game accessible for the young audience (maybe slowing the flow of information makes it easier to comprehend) but the number and cadence of text boxes really slows down the combat. The menus also seem entirely too cumbersome, particularly for a touch screen device.

As result, I didn’t really get into the game until I started playing with the assistance of a type chart and an alphabetical listing of pokemon and their types. It was just too tedious to experiment with ineffective attacks, and I don't have time to commit to memorizing the monster types. I think I read that Sun & Moon is going to provide that information in-game, which will be a huge improvement for me.

I’m planning on buying Alpha Sapphire and Moon. I’ll probably go with torchic and litten as starters. The former because I didn’t get to use many fire or fighting attacks in X, the latter because I like the character design. I’m not sure if I’ll get AS in before Moon releases.
 

[Oedo]

Unless you really want a Pokemon fix between now and November, you might just wanna skip ORAS altogether. I loved Pokemon X too and was a bit let down when I played through Omega Ruby. It's a good game and I don't regret playing through it, but it's the first Pokemon game I've played that I would say is just "good" (rather than great or downright amazing like some of them have been). Many of the aspects you mentioned like the story, environments, and dialogue all felt like a step down and the Gen III Pokemon designs aren't the best imo (though given how wildly opinions can vary from one generation of Pokemon to the next, I'm sure some people would find that debatable). The one pleasant surprise is the DexNav feature which displays all the Pokemon available in any given area on the bottom screen and shows you which ones you've caught and how many you have left to catch, so I guess it might still be worth it if you're really enthralled with that part of the Pokemon games. They did a good job improving that aspect of it.

[rygar]

I think I have the itch because I was already contemplainting buying AS last night, lol. I can't see me waiting till Novemember, but I'll have the right expectations now so I'm not disappointed. Thanks.

[ejamer]

Persona 3 Portable:  Just finished this game off.  Mixed feelings in some ways. The combat system relies so heavily on hiding and hitting weaknesses, and the random level designs can feel tedious... but switching back and forth between dungeon crawling and relationship building prevents it from ever getting too tiresome.


Finally maxed the relationship with Mitsuru a couple of weeks before the end of the game, which was my personal goal. The spent the rest of the time before game end doting on her even though it didn't provide any bonuses - couldn't have maxed any other relationships anyway, and was too pleased with myself to worry about other stuff.


Final boss wasn't too bad because I had dumped all my stat boosting cards into two massively powerful personas before heading in. The battle took much longer than it should have though - I didn't know how to break the "reflect physical attacks" spell that had been cast, so was limited to much less powerful magic for a few phases of the battle.  Spoiler: All I had to do was hit it once or twice to shatter the barrier, and I could've gone back to doing massive damage... Oops.


I figure that should be a good primer for Tokyo Mirage Sessions... but will probably pick up something else in between to cleanse the palate between RPGs.

[rygar]

Adventure of Zelda: Link to the Past - 3DS VC

I finished my play through last Monday. I beat the first two Zeldas when they were originally released, but I haven’t had any exposure to the rest of the games in the series until now. I can see why LTTP has such a strong reputation and I imagine it must have been really mind blowing when it first came out. The scope and intricacy of the world is impressive even by today’s standards.  I’m definitely in the camp that thinks “story” in a game is important, but I’m also of the mind that story-telling in this medium is most successfully advanced through visual or audial means. The brilliant sprite work and rich environments are evocative and excellent examples of how visuals can help add narrative depth to a world. I have always felt that LOZ is hampered by the cutesiness of the enemy aesthetic. LTTP addresses that deficiency very well.
 
I know by its reputation that the Zelda series is a dungeon crawler extraordinaire, but that really isn’t the focus of the first two games. For me, LOZ shines when you are exploring the over world, with the dungeons being largely hack-and-slash slogs. The dungeons are somewhat more distinct in AOL, but AOL is even more combat focused than LOZ. LTTP is firmly centered on dungeon excavation, and for me at least, presented more navigational challenges than combat ones. I don’t know if there is a term for horizontal platformers (I think "platform" implies vertical movement), but the underlying mechanic of trying to successfully navigate an object through a dangerous environment is a core feature of LTTP. That largely isn’t present in the first two games from what I can remember.

I’ll be starting Link’s Awakening soon. I’m tempted to replay AOL first to get a refresher (I re-beat the first quest of LOZ at the end of 2015) so I can be more conscious of the evolution of the series as I’m playing through it. But with five untouched Zelda games still left for me on the 3DS, I’d rather dive right into the new experiences. I've never been a big fan of puzzle type games, and was concerned that the "new" Zelda wasn't really for me, but LTTP has me excited to play more of the series.

[rygar]

Super Ghouls n' Ghosts - 3DS VC

I am a big fan of the Ghosts n Goblins series, but I have to admit I’m smuggling in a lot of the arcade experience when I play the NES port. However, Super Ghouls n’ Ghosts is a beautiful game with a vibrant art design that really does justice to the arcade installments in the series. The environments are fabulous and include fun dynamic elements. The music and sound are great, even though I wish they would have retained more of the tininess of the original main theme and sound effects. The sprite work in general is much improved (although I’m not sure I like the transformation of Arthur from a don quixote-type to a HGH fueled superhero).

The volume and placement of enemies was the biggest challenge in GnG, but I found that more manageable in SGnG. The greater variety of weapon-types is probably a huge factor, but it also seems that the enemies are a bit nerfed. The red arremers in particular were much less lethal this time through (even without the crossbow). However, I think the pure platforming is harder in SGnG, and there is more of it.

The game lives up to its reputation for difficulty, but, I think SGnG is far less frustrating than GnG.  When I finished SGnG last night, I was sure I had done it more quickly than it took me to play through GnG. But when I checked the game log, I actually spent 30 minutes more on SGnG. I think that helps illustrate that the difficulty is less frustrating than in GnG, but I’m sure the freshness of the game to me was probably a contributing factor as well.  All-in-all, I think the difficulty actually works as story element. This is meant to invoke a crawl through hell with all the proverbial torture and torment. Dying so much plays into that trope.

My only real complaint is that slowdown is a pretty significant problem, especially in the latter stages of the game. It had an unfortunate side effect of both increasing the difficulty of the boss battles, while lessening their aesthetic impact.

[ClexYoshi]

7th Dragon III: Code VFD

I feel like Sega/Atlus did a good job sending this game to our own James Jones, because this game gets STUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUPID.


Okay, okay, I'm getting ahead of myself. lets get some positives out of the way. Yuzo Koshiro is still the friggin' man when it comes to composition and I feel coming out of crappy 3DS speakers or anything hooked up to the headphone jack doesn't give the audio design of this game justice. Also, if you love japanese voice acting, this game has a hell of a lot of that. The art design here is pleasant enough and I like a lot of the character design as well as designs for the dragons, and that there's... really only a couple of weird space alien things and a giraffe that they tried to pass off as a Dragon, which is good. The classes are also all wonderful and feel unique. a lot of them have multi-turn setup to get to what makes them great (this doesn't apply so much to the last two that are unlocked) and fiddling around with party composition is probably a good way to milk replay value out of this game, into addition to the battle system being snappy. the way it handles its encounters on a timer for the most part is pretty great too, and Dragons are fun to battle for the first half of the game before you get classes that can eliminate them in an efficient manner. Not to say I necessarily stopped having fun with the battle system at any point, given that's this game's most compelling content.

Now that I've cleared the air with a big ol' block of text about what i enjoy here, I have to really get into the things that chap my ass about this game. things that probably got to me a lot more than they probably should have.

Not necessarily a bad thing, but not a good one either... this game is essentially a game that seems like it was moved over from PSP development to 3DS. considering there were two of these games in Japan on the device and there is DLC that lets you use character models from that game, this may very well be the case. I actually like the SD look of everything in the original 7th dragon on DS. we're a little closer to having actual people here, but the character models are chibi people in comparison to how their artwork represents them. it actually is a bit of Pokemon X and Y syndrome in that regard, especially given the lack of 3D... at least the game's performance doesn't plummet to N64 levels in battles when there's a lot of enemies.

What is particularly on the not-good end of things is everything to do with the home base, Nodens. I think that having this place as the only real place for NPC interaction and the standard JRPG fare of cool-off period cheapens things. it not only makes the game world feel small in scope not having SOME sort of other towns or non-threatening areas to explore or check out. no, the two screens of Atlantis or Kazaak don't count. also, the latter is especially a shame given that it's a call-back to a fully realized JRPG town in the original 7th Dragon. Hell, if it wasn't for some of the dungeon design in this game, it would feel EERILY like the missing link between a proper Turn based RPG and say... FF13. More on that later.

The whole idea of upgrading Nodens is also superficial feeling, as the things that aren't items or skills research are pretty much a room that populates with NPCs and opens up a quest line. the quests themselves are thankfully spelled out for you and never tend to be horribly out of the way unless they pertain to a particular dungeon... then again, by the time you get to the bulk of the dungeoneering quests, you should hopefully have all dragons cleared out and be able to just spam opti-camo to get no encounters and have yourself a nice little walking sim to your next cutscene. other than that, some of the rooms seem to have little point to upgrading them. I feel like maybe the devs would have been better served thinning out the amount of dragon zenny and made it so you couldn't get a complete nodens until the post-game to make the choices more important.

Pro tip on that note; upgrade the sky lounge to level 3 ASAP and then become a complete whore with all the main NPCs, as they give you some pretty sweet rewards for spending some quality time with them while it cuts to black

This game's Narrative is where it falls apart. It starts off at Anime is Happening and ends somewhere between Sonic 06 retconning itself and complete and total ambivalence.  I might get a bit in-depth here for the sake of illustrating this. I will be just making a giant spoiler text block below.

Aside from this game's premise being Reign of Fire meets The Last Starfighter (7th Dragon 2020 for the PSP could very well be inspired by Reign of Fire directly), it's got so many tell-tale signs of just being anime. a bunch of the characters they introduce are fairly one dimensional. The potty-mouthed mascot, the sickly girl that just wants to help in spite of being a sick kid, the pervy but calm and collected boss, Koji Igarashi, the genetically engineered super solider that feels obsolete in your presence... harmless enough. this game treads familiar ground with time travel and the ancient kingdom of proud folks and the future that got blasted into the past. a lot of this seems to be narrative groundwork the previous games laid down and we're getting a best-of compilation while gaining a group of friends. although you have the cussy rabbit, this actually is got a sort of shoujou anime tone to it and it's lighthearted enough and it wasn't getting in the way. the game even made token attempts to really get me attached to some of these characters and revealed some dirty deets on some of the characters from the modern era to try and give some intrigue.

The things that should have given me warning signs that this game was going to jump off the deep end were when you learn that apparently dragonhood is how all life in the universe evolves and the incurable disease caused by the flowers was to weed out folks who don't have the potential for achieving dragonhood. Actually, alarm bells were ringing in my head that this was gonna be stupid and I pieced the plot twist together part of the way. the other thing that should have set alarm bells off is that they gave me this day off. this is a thing that usually only happens in a video game if **** is going to hit the fan. especially if you spend that day off making the nasty with another character. Mass Effect did it, so...

Yeah, in chapter 6, the game proceeds to kill off 99.5% of it's NPCs in an attempt to make you feel something. every main character that isn't Nagomimi dies, most of them from poisonus choking blood vomiting horribleness. the rest because your party personally has to kill them since they've become villans. by the end of it all, you're left with is some sort of vaguely defined Dragon god that your 9 person party was supposed to transform into but didn't, a bunny with a potty mouth, and a guy in a mask who's just been mysteriously following you only to spout nihilism at you in the end. Unit 13 (Jyu San Ba!) has essentially failed in their task to save humanity and killing VFD is a thing that you're really doing more out of spite than any hope that you can deus Ex Machina Humanity and Lucier-kind back from the abyss of death. of course you get the mickey mouse happy ending of pretty much retconning dragons out of existance and (mostly) fixing how you buttfucked time and space. I almost wish this game went full-on grimderp and Unit 13 embraced Dragonhood, or maybe your party leader at the time does and it makes you fight the final boss minus them and there were 8 different final bosses based on who your party leader's class or such, but that'd actually have been creative.

Seriously, **** the last two chapters, they ruin the whole game via a tonal shift so sharp it makes The Lone Ranger's butchering of native americans after the comic escape scene on a hand cart seem not terrible by comparison.


Also, speaking of wasted potential... the game makes you form 3 parties, and does a very token effort to sometimes split them up, but it's not like there's interesting interplay or interaction there. we get nothing like the phoenix cave or Kefka's tower from FF6. other than doing the big 9 person turn against bosses, the 3 team thing just feels like a wasted idea to get you to spend more of your near limitless money on the shop.


Also, this game's post-game content is terrible and difficulty spikes from room to room, making level grinding a nessessity almost constantly between each room of the extra dungeon.


Finally, I do want to say I applaud Sega's decision to make all the DLC free to early adopters. I feel like that's what the pre-order bonus on games should be now; treat the early adopters with respect and make folks who come in later have to pay for the extra content.

[azeke]

Attack of Friday Monsters (3DS):
It was okay, i guess?..

It relies on nostalgia for specific time and place but obviously i wasn't there, so it just all flies by me.

I also got confused by the story: who are aliens, is main character alien or not, is his father alien or not, are aliens evil or not.

I completed the game but episodes 3, 4, 5 are marked as incomplete and it bothered me so i wanted to complete it in post-game but apparently i can't do it and all i can do now is just keep playing card game for a chance to get gleams to gather remaining four cards.