Messages

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Movies & TV / Re: All Things Netflix! Coming Soon: The Netflix Experience, Live and In Person!??

« on: November 04, 2024, 12:20:44 AM »

I was blown away by how good Arcane was. I've dabbled in the game with some college friends years ago but understood very little outside of the basic gameplay. So all the lore was new to me. Season 2 is coming in a few weeks and its going to be the last one. While these shorter series can be nice, I do wish a few would last longer than 2-3 seasons. But then again the few that do last longer tend to fall apart before the end if they even do end so I guess I should be happy to get something fantastic and short over 5-10 seasons of mediocre slop that overstays its welcome.

I believe Riot's already stated that they're going to do more shows in Arcane's world, just not as another season of Arcane, much like how Castlevania Nocturne is a sequel to the 1st Netflix Castlevania show but takes place in a different time period and featuring different characters.

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Launches App For Game Soundtracks, Requires NSO Subscription

« on: October 30, 2024, 08:01:36 PM »

This seems neat, though I wish the selection was better and I'm not sure there's a reason to use this over just pulling up the soundtrack on Youtube. Looks like you can even download songs to play without streaming.

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TalkBack / Re: It's Happening: Xenoblade Chronicles X To Be Remastered In March 2025

« on: October 29, 2024, 10:17:54 AM »

I can't wait to buy this game and then not actually play it...again.

*Sees Xenoblade 2 and Xenoblade 3 cracking their anime knuckles in the corner*

Port the remaining 2 Zelda and 1 Yoshi games now, you cowards. Apparently, Wii U s are dying off these days due to defective chips, so it'd be nice to get the last of the worthwhile Wii U exclusives off that thing.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober V: The Dream Child

« on: October 27, 2024, 09:28:03 AM »

The constant backtracking up and down the same 2-3 areas in Maiden of Black Water (plus the constant defense segments) really killed that game for me. Curious to try out Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, but not at the price they're offering it with no physical version.

I finished Master Detective Archives: Rain Code+ last night, and...I'll more thoroughly write-up my thoughts on it later. Suffice it to say, the game's not great. I liked it overall, but it should have been so much better. There is a baffling amount of incompetence on display considering the pedigree of the team that made it, particularly when it comes to the writing.

Also, it is incredible that they had the nerve to charge $16+ for those DLC chapters back on the Switch, 5 minute-long DLC where the player barely even touches the controller for the most part.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober V: The Dream Child

« on: October 22, 2024, 12:29:35 AM »

Wrapped up The Last of Us PS5 so I could get it off my HDD. Nothing new to say about it.

Making my way through Rain Code+, and man...that game's a wild one. I go back and forth as to whether I like it, especially as a big fan of the Danganronpa & Ace Attorney series. It certainly doesn't help that the game  starts out on a truly awful note with a 3-4 hour long "Chapter 0" where you're basically thrown into the insanity & mini-games with very little story & character setup. Once the game settled into more of its groove with Chapter 1, I started liking it more but these Mystery Labyrinths...well...they are and they aren't the Class Trials all over again with the serial numbers filed off, and not for the better.

One of my biggest issues with the Danganronpa games has been the increasing reliance on gimmicky mini-games as a crutch to pad out the class trials. Well, Rain Code dispenses with the pleasantries of even pretending to have the player do deduction and detective work by answering questions and just asks "what if EVERYTHING was a mini-game?" And outside the Crime Scene Reconstructions they're all very familiar. "Reasoning Death Battle" is just a more active version of the Non-Stop Debate, "Shinigami Puzzle" is just the latest attempt at trying to make "Hangman's Gambit" work (and it doesn't, for the same reasons that minigame never worked: you have to spell the mystery word in order and it's difficult to guess what word the devs want you come up with when you have no data); and "Deduction Denouement" is just "Closing Argument" with absolutely nothing changed.

I will say this, though: "God Shinigami" is by FAR the best incarnation of the various rhythm-based mini-games the Danganronpa games had where you had to shout down a culprit who's gone nuts. Those minigames universally suck, and God Shinigami is both legitimately enjoyable and better worked into the overall gameplay since you have to present evidence along with jumping over or bashing through obstacles.

Speaking of Shinigami, besides the massive performance issues the Switch version of Rain Code legendarily had, the one thing that the reviewer community seemed to universally agree on is that Shinigami is fucking annoying. Midway through Chapter 2, I see no reason to disagree with that opinion. She is unbelievably obnoxious.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober V: The Dream Child

« on: October 19, 2024, 10:21:29 AM »

Well, a bunch of stuff I was looking to play got delayed throughout the month (my copy of Rain Code+ just got delivered, Alan Wake 2 got pushed back a few days, & Ys X is practically arriving in November), so to kill time I played through Little Nighmares 2 from my backlog and...I hate it. I'm a big fan of the first game, and I have no idea what happened here, but the devs completely lost the plot. The first game was clever and unsettling, and this prequel is just constant trial & error bullshit as you run through gauntlets of "gotcha" death traps designed to kill you until you memorize their exact positions and timing. And that's when you're not also fighting the game's camera to figure out where objects are in the world relative to your character.

Yeah, the 1st game's emphasis on cat & mouse stealth could get annoying at times (and that trophy for beating the game without dying is legendarily difficult. No, I don't have it), but this was not the right direction to go instead. Apparently, there's a 3rd game coming, and I can't say I'm looking forward to it after this.

In the last month, Sony added their extremely unnecessary, unwanted The Last of Us PS5 "remake" to the PS+ tier I temporarily have access to, so I figured I might as well give it a try. It's been probably a decade since I played the original game. Put a few hours in, and it's reminding me that there was once a time when I didn't hate this franchise and the homogeneity its success led Sony to embrace. The original Last of Us is a special game, and this is a good-looking "remake". It still shouldn't exist, but if you've for some reason never played the original Last of Us, it's definitely the best way to do that.

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Movies & TV / Re: All Things Netflix! Coming Soon: The Netflix Experience, Live and In Person!??

« on: October 12, 2024, 09:08:35 PM »

Well, Netflix's Arcane received a lovely 4K Season 1 Steelbook release recently, so I finally got around to watching it. I'm on episode 4 and...yep, for once everyone is right about something. This show is pretty damn good, and I don't give a **** about League of Legends. That $90 million budget is definitely on-screen, too.

One of these days, I'll get around to watching Cyberpunk Edgerunners, too.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober V: The Dream Child

« on: October 05, 2024, 01:07:53 PM »

Probably won't be anything from me until late into the month, if at all, when Alan Wake 2's physical edition comes out. I played a lot of horror games in August, and my copy of Rain Code's been delayed till near the end of the month. Closest I have to anything to contribute would be all the TimeSplitters: Future Perfect I've been playing lately. Granted, it has several levels devoted to tongue-in-cheek horror movie homages, but the game as a whole is a pure comedy over a variety of settings. It doesn't really count.

The game is still pretty damn good, though, and the PS5 port/remaster looks pretty great for its age. It's way more consistent than TimeSplitters 2 is, which I replayed last month.

As for We Happy Few, I tried playing that around the time it originally released, and it just didn't click with me. I got as far as re-entering proper Joy-fueled society with the 1st protagonist, and I ended up bailing out of boredom and frustration with all the jank.

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NWR Feedback / Re: Can't get the forums to load now...

« on: September 22, 2024, 09:58:29 PM »

Well, the forums have been relatively stable for me for the last week or so, but there was a solid 2 weeks or so where the site just would not load. It was irritating, too, considering all that writing I did for Backlogust.

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TalkBack / Re: Bandai Namco Acquires Rights To Former PS Vita Exclusive Freedom Wars, Remaster Due In January

« on: September 18, 2024, 04:52:35 PM »

So...serious question, but what is the draw of this game? All the footage I've seen of this game just looks like all you do is run around ruined environments shooting at creatures with your hypothetical friends. That would have been novel on the Vita, but what's the hook here? I played a similar series on the Vita back in the day called Soul Sacrifice, and the big draw there was the mood and loot. This...no offense...just looks like a bunch of other squad shooters at first glance. What am I missing, because the people who love this game are so passionate about it?

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General Gaming / Re: I for one welcome the glorious return of overconfident E3 2006 Sony.

« on: September 14, 2024, 03:54:54 AM »

I think it's worth mentioning in all this that Sony, for the 2nd time this year, showed the terrifying and predictable aspect of the Shiny Digital Future by going into every player's library who owned Concord and forcibly removing it from their account. The last time this happened was with the Stellar Blade demo that was accidentally released a month early, so I got to see this happen first-hand.

Sure, it was "only" a dead game and an early demo, and people who bought Concord were forced to receive a refund. It was only that this time, but you can be sure that we'll never see a P.T. situation ever again, where people were allowed to just hold onto a game that the publishers don't want around anymore.

Incidentally, when P.T. got yanked, you lost your ability to redownload it, even though you "bought" it. Enjoy those digital-only PS5 Pros, kids.

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General Gaming / Re: I for one welcome the glorious return of overconfident E3 2006 Sony.

« on: September 12, 2024, 01:27:10 AM »

The $80 add-on is most definitely not necessary.

The estimated 280 PS4 & PS5 discs sitting on my wall right now would disagree with that sentiment, as will many "digital only" people when those incarnations of the PlayStation Network no longer exist or when certain titles get pulled for licensing rights.

I understand what you mean, but anyone with the kind of money to contemplate buying something like the Pro is probably more invested in the PlayStation ecosystem in other ways, too, as evidenced by the aforementioned disc drive selling out.

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General Gaming / Re: I for one welcome the glorious return of overconfident E3 2006 Sony.

« on: September 11, 2024, 01:53:32 AM »

I don't understand why they didn't announce this when they announced that the website store was closing for PS3/Vita

That's a bold strategy, Cotton, announcing a $700 console with a necessary $80 add-on and a $30 stand without showing a single compelling reason to buy it in a particularly poor economic climate. Let's see if it pays off for them.

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General Gaming / Re: BacklAugust 2024! (Forums Are Dead Edition)

« on: September 01, 2024, 09:52:21 AM »

The Splatoon 3 DLC is baffling to me. The setup would be perfect for co-op, so why is it only single-player? There are already several games with a similar premise which have co-op, so I have no idea why they keep making single-player-only DLC for a multiplayer-focused game.

My guess is that it was planned and prototyped, but scrapped when they saw potential technical issues when you had 2 players and dozens of enemies spraying ink everywhere. The enemy count on-screen gets absolutely absurd towards the end of the tower. A common remark about the DLC I see online is confusion as to why it took so long to get released, and I suspect a scrapped co-op mode could be the reason why.

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General Gaming / Re: BacklAugust 2024! (Forums Are Dead Edition)

« on: September 01, 2024, 01:32:39 AM »

Well now, it seems I ended up having the time I needed before the end of the month (+1 hour) to complete the remaining 2 Dark Pictures Anthology games I had in my backlog, and they make for a very curious pair: House of Ashes and The Devil in Me.

House of Ashes is very typical for the series: low on subtlety, high on the B movie acting and monsters. The scope is limited; the action is big (for this series); and the QTEs are many. You are a group of US Marines investigating what they think is Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons cache in 2003 Iraq, and they stumble into...alien vampires hiding out in underground Sumerian ruins. The story is pretty strongly focused on the theme of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and there's some spooky backstory with a previous expedition that had found these ruins...but what you see is what you get. That may sound like damning with faint praise, but the series needed this after basically fake-outs with the 1st 2 Dark Pictures games. Easily my biggest complaint with this game is that House of Ashes has by far the most QTEs in the series, they have VERY short timers, and the consequences for missing even 1 are extremely punishing.

The Devil in Me was a very pleasant surprise, as it seems that Supermassive decided that the big feature they'd add for this game would be...actual gameplay. Gone are the wide-angle "cinematic" cameras and the extremely robotic way the characters shuffled around the sets and bumped into walls, replaced with natural movement and an over-the-shoulder camera. Instead of forced letterboxing, you get the full picture. In previous Dark Pictures games, characters moved like they had both feet stuck in tar, but in this installment they can actually run. You can push and pull objects in the environment and perform context-sensitive jumps or crouches under objects. There are basic puzzles to solve and inventory items to pickup and use. The QTEs are dramatically less frequent and more forgiving in general. There's a fucking UI indicator now when you're about to touch something that's going to move the story forward and force you to stop exploring.

I realize how extremely basic all this sounds, but it makes this game so much more playable and SOOOO much less frustrating than the 1st 3 Dark Pictures games.

I also really vibe with the premise, following a team of serial killer documentarians who become trapped in a constantly-shifting murder hotel modeled after the one operated by America's real world 1st Serial Killer. The atmosphere is consistently spooky, and the sequences engaging. My only real issue with the game is that for all the information you can find about the killer over the course of the game, they seemed to work better as a villain in the background pulling strings than what they ended up as in my playthrough.

It's a real shame that the Dark Pictures series started with a game as profoundly bad as Man of Medan, because it's really colored how people see this series. It's certainly a large part of why it's taken me so long to play all these games. I look forward to seeing how Supermassive continues to improve as the series goes to the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism: SPACE!

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General Gaming / Re: BacklAugust 2024! (Forums Are Dead Edition)

« on: August 30, 2024, 06:09:08 PM »

For my final completion of the month, I've finished Death's Door (Xbox X|S). I first heard about it when seeing a lot of people compare it to Tunic, and the two do have some things in common such as their Zelda inspirations and drab, plain art style. The combat is a little more involved and flows better, but still feels tedious at times with the large amount of hits that enemies and bosses take to defeat. The game is more linear than I was expecting, but there's still a little bit of exploration in each area, which I like. Some of the wacky characters belie the serious and dark tone, though the game does seem to treat the subject of death with a certain brand of irreverence. Overall, Tunic has the more interesting premise, but Death's Door has the better gameplay, making them tough to compare. I'd probably rate the game Breadcrumbs out of Feeding Birds.

Yes, I completed Death's Door a year or so myself and had much the same issue: strangely punishing difficulty for the kind of game this seemed to want to be, mostly because of spongy enemy health bars (which get even worse if you go for the trophy that has you beating nearly all the game with the .5 damage umbrella, as I did on my 2nd playthrough). Overall, I do think I prefer Death's Door to Tunic because Tunic has pretty much the exact same issue, but Death's Door has more for the player to do. Combat just flat out sucks in Tunic.

It looks like I probably won't get to finishing House of Ashes and The Devil In Me before the end of the month due to some family stuff going on, but I did accidentally roll credits on something I was picking away at last month: the Side Order DLC for Splatoon 3. I had mostly made my way up the Tower of Order last month, but got stuck on the final boss and his cheap eye beam move spam. Yesterday, on my lunch hour, I decided to do a run just to kill time, but with the main splat gun instead of the Splat Dualies.

To my surprise, I had an exceptionally good run that ended with me conquering the final boss after I got home and rolling credits. I only died once, and yes...it was to those damn eye lasers after getting stuck in enemy ink. I can't say I did anything differently this time. I just happened to have a round where I managed to keep the ink flowing around the boss so he couldn't trap me. Maybe the Splat Dualiers just have really terrible ink capacity.

In general, I hate the main Splatoon Multiplayer (but love Salmon Run). I get why people like it, but to me it's far too limited. It's not really possible for players to play alternative roles where they can better contribute, and by this point in any Splatoon game's life you're only playing against the super diehards who play nothing BUT Splatoon, and it's really not fun getting wrecked every single match as a new player with access to both "****" and "all" in terms of weapons and abilities. And I've had THAT particular issue with every Splatoon game: MP is only fun at launch, when everyone's on a level playing field.

I've also found the SP offerings in the Splatoon games pretty mediocre overall, but the real draw of these games has consistently been the DLC. It was the best content in Splatoon 2, and it's the best content here as you climb a 30 floor tower full of randomly-generated scenarios and floor layouts using your (unlocked) personal pick of weapons. My only real issues with the DLC (besides the design of that final boss) are the boring visual presentation and the limited selection of modes and maps the DLC has to work with. There could just stand to be more variety in general.

I know there's more to this DLC in conquering it with every weapon, but I really don't care to waste hours trying to take some of these challenges on with weapons I truly loathe in the main game, even as the Pallet modifiers change the way they work.

I look forward to the DLC being the best part of Splatoon 4, damning with faint praise as that is.

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General Gaming / Re: BacklAugust 2024! (Forums Are Dead Edition)

« on: August 29, 2024, 01:26:50 AM »

Well, my LRG copy of the Grandia HD Collection arrived last Friday, so I figured I'd replay an old favorite with Grandia 2 HD.

I originally played the game on PC 20 years ago, so I was looking forward to seeing how it held up, and in general I think it did...but my complaints with the game now are pretty much the same as they were then: this game feels rushed & unfinished, even by the standards of its time. By RPG standards, the game is rather short at 30-40 hours. Under normal circumstances, that would delight me since games these days never seem to know when to shut up and end, but the game achieves his feat by basically being very empty. This game is so linear it makes Final Fantasy X look like an open world game. Towns are full of people to talk to and houses you can go into, but few have anything interesting to say and there's nothing to find. Dungeons/environments are somehow both exceptionally straightforward and yet extremely easy to get lost in since you don't have a map and areas within stages tend to look extremely similar.

While this game has a story (and it's absolutely bonkers, especially for its time), it was designed around its combat encounters and it would really rather you got back to the fighting as soon as possible. The combat system is still one of the most unique I've ever seen in an RPG, with a focus on time management and planning counters to what the enemy is doing. The player also has a truly exceptional amount of control over character growth, since you dictate what moves characters have access to and how strong they get at all times. I just wish there was more to DO in the game except battle, especially towards the end of the game when both you and the enemies are just spamming the same 30+ second FMV spells at each other over...and over...and over...again.

It's worth noting that I played this game on Hard for trophy purposes, because EVEN ON that difficulty this is still an exceptionally easy game. The developers basically give up on trying to balance the game 2/3 of the way in since it's so easy for the player to get overpowered by that point. Most screens in the game feature a save point where you can full heal & refill your SP/MP for free, and the roaming monsters don't easily respawn. That said, the End Game boss gauntlet on Hard is truly absurd, topped off with a Final Boss that gets basically 3 turns for every one of yours; constantly buffs himself; and constantly spams FMV AOEs. I didn't die to him, but it basically took me an hour to kill him because of the sheer number of moves he got compared to me; the length of the spell animations; and how I at best could only attack him with one party member every round since I only had a 3 person party; 1 member always had to heal; and another had to de-buff the boss as best they could. It was just sheer tedium of chipping away at an impossibly large health bar in what's meant to be a triumphant moment.

In general I still quite enjoy Grandia 2. The story is very simplistically-told and full of tropes (as was typical for its time), but it's heartfelt. It swings for the fences in ways that feel very reminiscent of Monolith Soft's work. The HD remaster does an admirable job of looking exactly like I remember that janky PC version being, complete with the wonky audio bugs and inconsistently widescreen-ed FMV spells.

I might get around to playing Grandia 1 HD at some point, but I remember not particularly liking what I played of the PS1 version of that game and I don't have nostalgic attachment to it like I do the sequel (and even Grandia 3, which isn't in this collection but which I have beaten in the past).

I'm considering knocking out the final 2 Dark Pictures games I haven't finished before the end of the month, but otherwise that will probably do it for me.

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TalkBack / Re: Konami Announces Castlevania DS Collection And Updates Suikoden Remasters Status

« on: August 27, 2024, 12:16:13 PM »

And so begins another 2-3 year wait for the inevitable physical version. -_-

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General Gaming / Re: BacklAugust 2024! (Forums Are Dead Edition)

« on: August 25, 2024, 04:45:25 PM »

Ugh. My condolences to you. That's an awful one-two punch you received there. I hope things go better for your second half of August.

I am sorry to hear about your cat. I have lost quite a few in my time and it is never easy.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

Yeah, when it comes to my gaming collection, the Tales series is my dump stat. They're all so long and so complicated that I never feel like jumping into one of them. Doesn't help that I only particularly liked Phantasia & Symphonia (of which there is only one, and don't you dare suggest otherwise).

This is actually the first Tales games I've every played and it's kind of making me not want to play any of the other because of this reason.  I'll save my full thoughts for when I finally beat the game but right now, this game has been going on far longer than it has any right to.  Other games that go on too long at least give new gameplay to spice things up, but this game hasn't done anything to change up the gameplay in over 40 hours now.  I was playing on Hard mode for much of this game, but I've recently turned down the difficulty to make fights go faster because I'm just so burned out.

If you play another Tales game, I highly recommend Symphonia (especially if your only other Tales game is Vesperia, which is similarly styled). But from what I've heard, don't play the game on Switch. Every other version of the remaster apparently runs fine, but Symphonia on Switch was apparently a REALLY bad port.

That said, I can tell you that Symphonia kinda set the bar of all Tales games being 100+ hours long. IIRC, Arise does buck that trend, though.

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General Gaming / Re: BacklAugust 2024! (Forums Are Dead Edition)

« on: August 22, 2024, 09:42:08 PM »

Been picking away at this one for a while now, but I just rolled credits on Song of Horror, a particularly unique survival horror game that feels very inspired by Eternal Darkness., albeit primarily inspired by Lovecraft.

This game is extremely intense, especially in the first 2 (of 5) episodes. You play as a series of characters that literally hear a song that should not be heard, cursing them to be eternally hunted by an Eldrich incarnation of Darkness known as The Presence. In gameplay terms, you explore classic survival horror-style puzzle box environments, solving puzzles and obtaining clues. Meanwhile, the Presence AI stalks you. The Presence cannot be killed, and it cannot be stopped. It can only be beaten back temporarily. I realize that's obviously a very "Lovecraft" sort of tone, but I definitely felt elements of Japanese horror as well. Death is inevitable. It's just a matter of how long you can last.

For instance, you may be walking down a hallway, and suddenly it will appear as countless bony hands attempting to rip open a nearby door, whereupon you have to quickly run to the door and slam it shut using a combination of built up strength and timing your slams. Other times, The Presence will start to flood the area you're in with Darkness, forcing you to quickly find a hiding spot and calm your nerves as the legion of hands around you scream. Other times, you might just be treated to a "blink and you'll miss it" jump scare or Eternal Darkness-style hallucination. Sometimes, it'll just park itself on the other side of a door, and if you're not listening at the door to see if it's there, you'll be in for a surprise when you open that door.

Suffice it to say, The Presence delights in fucking with you, and until near the end of the game I didn't find its manifestations too frequent on the default difficulty level, though apparently the encounter rate is obscene on the highest difficulty.

However, there's a distinct twist to all this: every encounter with The Presence is lethal. If you fail a mini-game or you walk into a room where The Presence is waiting, that character is dead. Thy story is over. Turn in your character sheet.

This lends the game a delightful, but exhausting, tension that you just don't see in games all that often...but it did mean I had to confine my playtime to at most 1 episode a night. I also think the puzzles in this game are pretty badly designed after the 2nd episode, so a guide is strongly recommended. This was this developer's 1st game, and it very much shows it.

Overall, I strongly recommend Song of Horror if you're into this sort of thing. The atmosphere is just superb...but it caters to very particular tastes.

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General Gaming / Re: BacklAugust 2024! (Forums Are Dead Edition)

« on: August 18, 2024, 10:30:10 PM »

Thought I'd get one of the Supermassive Until Dawn clones out of my backlog, so I rolled through The Quarry.

Eh, it's OK. It's certainly better than I've seen out of this team's Dark Pictures series (the blessings of length certainly help there, as it allows the story to have proper build-up the Dark Pictures games don't get), but without getting into spoilers it is really kinda pathetic how obvious this game is at copying not only the Until Dawn formula, but its script as well. Supermassive also REALLY needs to update their performance capture tech, because they seem to have been using the same tech since the (originally meant for PS3) Until Dawn 9 years ago and characters look really super Uncanny Valley now (especially the teeth).

If you're going to hang the fate of your entire game on your tech, then your tech needs to not look as bad as it does here at times.

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General Gaming / Re: BacklAugust 2024! (Forums Are Dead Edition)

« on: August 17, 2024, 10:35:53 PM »

I was hoping to get quite a few games done this August.  I started playing Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition, in the later half of July.  I was hoping I could finish it by the first half of this month and then move on to several smaller games but things haven't worked out.  At the beginning of last week a storm knocked a tree on top of my garage which had me dealing with things that didn't leave time for gaming.  And then at the end of last week, I had an 11 year old cat die, which really made me depressed.  So yeah, this has not been a good month for me.

I did start playing again the last few days so hopefully I'll be able to at least finish Tales of Vesperia by the end of the month.

I started playing Vesperia many years ago on the 360, but put it down because of other games going on at a time. One of these days, I'm finally going to get around to playing my copy of the Vesperia remaster...and the Symphonia remaster (though at least I've played the original there)...and Xillia 1 & 2...and finish Graces F's epilogue....and finish Hearts...and play Beseria...and play Zestiria...and play Arise...and play the Arise DLC...

Yeah, when it comes to my gaming collection, the Tales series is my dump stat. They're all so long and so complicated that I never feel like jumping into one of them. Doesn't help that I only particularly liked Phantasia & Symphonia (of which there is only one, and don't you dare suggest otherwise).

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General Gaming / Re: BacklAugust 2024! (Forums Are Dead Edition)

« on: August 17, 2024, 05:33:06 PM »

Working on Luigi's Mansion 2 HD and Paper Mario TTYD at the moment!
Also might play Super Catboy, that looks like a great 16 high-bit pixel art action platformer.

Funny that you should bring up the Switch version of Paper Mario TTYD, because I just rolled credits on it. Overall, I still like the game, and the addition of the warp pipe room makes this game SO much more playable than the original version (if you did the Troubles or remember General White, you know why). That said, Chapter 3 (aka the Wrestling Chapter) is still fucking awful, and that last boss fight is an utter slog. I remembered it being one of the hardest boss fights Nintendo's ever made, and I still stand by that now after it took my entire inventory to take down. It's just an utter battle of attrition, which gets tedious as you just repeat the same actions over and over again.

Not gonna bother with some of the new post-game boss fights Nintendo added because I really don't care.

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General Gaming / Re: BacklAugust 2024! (Forums Are Dead Edition)

« on: August 09, 2024, 08:39:14 PM »

I was wondering if we were going to do one of these, and as it so happens I have one to add to the pile already: Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (PS4), which I just finished a few nights ago.

This one's been in my backlog for years, essentially because the 1st case of this game REALLY pissed me off at the time, both because it lies to the player in a MYSTERY game and because it fridges a potentially interesting female character to further a lesser dude's story arc.

This game...is hard to talk about in this setting, because this game is incredibly polarizing in the Danganronpa fanbase explicitly due to its final case: the game's ending. Maybe it's because I already knew the big twist going in BECAUSE it pissed so many people off (and maybe it's because I knew the main storyline got a mediocre anime conclusion), but I'm actually pretty OK with the ending despite it basically being 3-4 hours of the developers raising their middle fingers at the Danganronpa fanbase and telling them how much they hate them.

No, I'm not exaggerating about that in the slightest. The final case of Danganronpa V3 is the staff airing their grievances with the Danganronpa fanbase, basically calling them bloodthirsty psychotics that force them to make games they didn't want to make anymore.

And then this same team went on to make Master Detective Archives: Rain Code (and a lot of the same staff worked on the Akudama Drive anime), so that sentiment was full of ****.

Perhaps I'm also not pissed off because I found the rest of the game extremely "safe" as far as this series goes. Lot of recycling tropes and ideas from other games, only much less interesting this time with much less compelling characters. As fucking nuts as the final case is, at least the game was doing something NEW and interesting for once.

I'm glad to finally have the game out of my backlog, but it's not a game I like very much. IMO, this series very much peaked with the 1st entry, and it just got ridiculous and "Kingdom Hearts-y" as it went along.

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General Chat / Re: NBA Thread: Brought To You By The Tampa Bay Raptors Of Toronto

« on: June 26, 2024, 11:28:53 PM »

The Jazz have not historically drafted well, but from all accounts they did pretty well tonight, grabbing Cody Williams at #10 and Isaiah Collier at #29 when some outlets were projecting them to trade up to a higher pick. From what I've read, both were players that were at one point projected to fall a lot higher in the draft, but injuries and whatnot made teams wary of them.

However it works out, this was a weak draft and the Jazz aren't going to be contending anytime soon, so aside from potential trades they couldn't really "lose" here: either the new players really work out and the Jazz contend for a low playoff seed, or they catastrophically fail and the Jazz are in full tank mode as expected.

Really hope we get rid of Jordan Clarkson in the next few weeks. He's an albatross across this team's neck, actively getting in the way of young player development while not really winning us any games with his ball-hogging.