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

[Mop it up]

Every mission has something that requires an ability you don't yet have, even the final one, so you can never 100% a level on your first trip. I didn't mind it so much, it's kind of like how 3D Mario levels sometimes have a task you can't complete until you unlock some ability or powerup. I just waited until I had every disguise and ability before going back to replay the missions.

Co-op could be tricky yeah, but I think it's doable and would be a worthwhile inclusion, even if it ended up being a bit clunky. The only thing which would tempt me to buy the game again on Switch is if they added co-op.

[MagicCow64]

Resident Evil 7 (PC):

Spoilers!

Well, I finished this up quicker than I expected at a hair over eight hours, as it turns out I was halfway done when I wrote up my impressions.

And the game did not get any better from there; in fact, it got worse! The two final areas, a derelict ship and a derelict mine, are extremely bland, making the ho-hum house complex seem creative by comparison. And the mine is just a big monster closet, stuffed full of the same creatures (and slight variants) you've been fighting the whole game, which aren't good in the first place. Plus, as I learned early on, you can quite easily run past almost all enemies.

I was actually surprised when the end came, as the final boss is extremely underwhelming and easy (although the whole game is, really). I had a grenade launcher and magnum that I never actually used because I was saving them for when things got tight, but they were never remotely necessary. And the game is so scripted that I have zero interest in playing again on a decently challenging mode.

Overall, I'm kind of baffled at how positive a reception this is getting. I guess it's not as bankrupt as 5, but I am strapped to think of anything positive to say about it. I'd give it a 5/10 for being functional.

[oohhboy]

Enter the Gungeon.

It's quite hard and I enjoy this a lot more than any variant of Binding of Issac which at this point feels obsolete compared to newer, better games.

The only real compliant I have is that item drops is a little too random as in it is almost absolutely so. You can have runs where you are loaded down with guns but that means you don't have the stat boosts like things as simple as having more health or status modifiers which enhance guns functionality. This results in some very uneven difficulty.

That said I appreciate that they are willing to let the dice roll as they happen with only a few nudges here and there, trusting in the player to make do.

[lolmonade]

I "beat" Gravity Rush 2 (PS4).  I sort of played straight through the story mission beats rather than completing the side missions, which I'm finding myself regretting at this point as I go back to play through them all, because 1) they provide some side context to what you're doing in the main story, and 2) provide currency important to upgrading abilities, which could have been helpful in some boss battles & sequences I really struggled with earlier in game.


For anyone who has played the vita game or the remaster, the graphical improvement and size of the world will be jarring in comparison.  The world is so much larger in scale than before, both in land mass and distance between some of the land masses.  Additionally, they've added a bit more of layering to some of the newer areas, meaning there'll be veritcality to how you need to travel from place to place.


Enemies are a little more varied, which is appreciated.  The game has also included some variance on the combat with two different shiftable gravity styles beyond the standard - one which is more floaty and based on speed, and another which is like your character is weighed down but is a powerhouse.  You can shift between these and the standard combat style by different swipes on the PS4 touchpad, and it actually works surprisingly well.


Biggest hinderance to the game so far are the story missions.  It's clear they took note that the biggest gripe of the first game was the repetitiveness of the missions.  But some of the new missions include an over-reliance on stealth missions, which never play out very fun, and feel more like frustration when you're being limited in a game which the biggest joy playing it is when you're messing with gravity.  In some ways, it just seems like the devs came up with a neat concept to surround the gameplay around, but then couldn't think of inventive ways to twist gameplay in a way that didn't subtract from the fun of playing as this character.


Griping aside, I love the characters in the world, enjoy the story for what it is, and moving around in the world is still a joy.  While I beat the story proper, they've alluded to an epilogue that I won't delve into here at this time, I'm hoping it fills some story gaps I've had from the first game that I don't feel were addressed in the main story, especially if there's never another sequel in this series.

[Luigi Dude]

Xenoblade X


Finally, it's all over.




I started in October and it took almost 4 months and over 270 hours, but I have conquered Mira.  I even made sure to beat all the optional Super Bosses as well since I wanted to make sure citizens of NLA have nothing to worry about.  Well until the eventual sequel at least.

Anyway, awesome game that I just couldn't put down.  Now I loved the first Xenoblade as well, and put over 130 hours in that with most side quest completed but didn't go all the way like with X.  I'd say the combat is what kept me going since I liked the battles more in this game then the first Xenoblade.  The amount of customization I kept going through with my main character kept things pretty fresh for me even after 200 hours in. 

The one negative I have is the Skell battles become kind of repetitive after a while.  One of the nice things about normal combat is all the different variety and options you have but then the Skells take away a lot of that.  I mean at first getting the Skells is awesome but after a while I wish they would have fleshed out their combat more.  Hopefully the eventual X2 sequels focuses more on improving the Skell combat so it's as fleshed out as the in person combat.



Now lets see if I can get through with smaller indie titles in my backlog before Breath of the Wild comes out since that's probably going to consume me for another 4 months after it's released.

[Evan_B]

I'm impressed with XCX completionist files, and while I adore the game myself, it is one of those things that I will never 100% because of how non-transparent it is. I don't like sifting through wikias in order to progress through sidequests, and while I love the game, there's enough issues I have with some of its more absurd customization options and such that makes me feel that, at my already respectable 197 hour save file, I'm okay with walking away.

I completed Colony 6 in the original Xenoblade Chronicles and I've obtained an Ares 70 in XCX, those are the kinds of highlights that I can leave a game on. I will always appreciate both Xenoblade titles for the amount of detail, but the sidequests, to me, have always been something I can tackle if they are close to my narrative path. Finding a stranded girl in the middle of Oblivia and taking on her quests was worthwhile, to me. But XCX's design and continued reliance on gathering randomly generated field drops and low-percentage enemy drops is something I can't respect, and I don't feel like wasting my time for it. Unfortunately, XCX sort of relies on some of these types of quests in order to progress story and I don't like that.

If Monolith toned down their sidequest-padding/fetish just a bit and focused down on their character-driven sidequests (which are honestly some of my favorite parts of the game), they would be perfect. Hell, I still think they're perfect already since they dedicate themselves to interesting world design and immersion.

...I mean, who wants to talk about A Link to the Past?!

So I went full-ham and decided to do a 100% run of this game, which is definitely as time-consuming and intense as Xenoblade Chronicles X. Having played, but not completed, the game once before, I knew what I was doing going into the experience, and I admittedly had some help from one of my favorite 3DS games, A Link Between Worlds. I was surprised at how ambivalent I was upon completing the game. I really only found the design of a few dungeons to be all that impressive (Tower of Hera is always satisfying, and the Desert Palace has the neat mechanic of actually exiting the premises before going back in, and then dungeons 4 and 6 were really fun), while others were very frustrating because of how non-traditional they were. As I got further and further into the game, I respected how different a lot of these designs were, but just because they were different didn't necessarily make them fun. What was rewarding, however, were the bosses- with the exception of Moldorm. Lots of inventive ways of approach, yet the game never explicitly tells you how to exploit these bosses, and I managed to figure out a lot of their weaknesses all by myself.

There are a few moments in the game where ambiguous design and localization got the best of me. I went through pretty much the entire game not realizing that you could use the Pegasus Dash to knock apart piles of stones, and there's a few instances of hidden secrets that you really need to pay careful attention towards. However, the Magic Mirror environmental puzzles are really fantastic, and I feel that, if technology had allowed it, a dungeon that had you traveling back and forth between worlds in the way that you do on Death Mountain would have been the ultimate culmination of the mechanics of the game.

Speaking of the literal climax of A Link to the Past, however, I was underwhelmed by Ganon's Tower. While the design of the rooms was absolutely brutal itself, featuring a lot of rooms with Beamos and those mimic characters, as well as a nightmarish invisible flooring sequence, I steeled myself for the final battle upon reaching the top, and... just fought Agahnim again? And it's not all that difficult, either. And then you're given the freedom to stock up on Blue Potions before you finally fight Ganon. It doesn't feel all that exciting, and while later bosses in the franchise would be fought at the end of their respective dungeon, they also don't require some slightly secretive power-ups in order to defeat.

Ultimately, A Link to the Past feels like the opposite of XCX- a game where environmental cues are absolutely crucial and where everything means something. I was floored when I realized that undefeated tree outside the woodcutters' house turned out to be a secret passageway- but the fact that there's dialogue about its odd quality foreshadows this. It seems that the game was meant to be explored thoroughly many times over in order to find new things each time you completed a dungeon, and while its scale seems modest in this day and age, it's an impressive display of extremely dense world design that I hope Breath of the Wild doesn't skimp on, itself. While A Link to the Past is not my favorite in the series, I'm glad to say that I've completed it in full.

[ejamer]

Xenoblade X

Finally, it's all over.
...

Wow, nice job!

I had started the game, but set it down and never got around to picking it back up. Lack of story hurt in that regard - although I'm still excited to play after breaking down my backlog a little bit further.

...If Monolith toned down their sidequest-padding/fetish just a bit and focused down on their character-driven sidequests (which are honestly some of my favorite parts of the game), they would be perfect. ...

That would be awesome. I love the games for what they are, but agree that some of the side quests are pretty shallow.

...I mean, who wants to talk about A Link to the Past?! ...

Also awesome! When this game first came out, it blew away expectations of what adventures games should be. While the scope now seems limited now, the game world is still packed with interesting discoveries and layers.

Nice job to finish off this classic gem.

[Mop it up]

That's some devotion to Xenoblade X. I didn't bother to 100% either Xenoblade game since there's far too much pointless busy work, but there's still plenty else to do in the game. Having a mountain of side stuff also gave me lots of opportunities to progress my characters at any point in the game, so I still liked the amount of content even if I didn't bother with a lot of it.

[Luigi Dude]

I'm impressed with XCX completionist files, and while I adore the game myself, it is one of those things that I will never 100% because of how non-transparent it is. I don't like sifting through wikias in order to progress through sidequests, and while I love the game, there's enough issues I have with some of its more absurd customization options and such that makes me feel that, at my already respectable 197 hour save file, I'm okay with walking away.

I completed Colony 6 in the original Xenoblade Chronicles and I've obtained an Ares 70 in XCX, those are the kinds of highlights that I can leave a game on. I will always appreciate both Xenoblade titles for the amount of detail, but the sidequests, to me, have always been something I can tackle if they are close to my narrative path. Finding a stranded girl in the middle of Oblivia and taking on her quests was worthwhile, to me. But XCX's design and continued reliance on gathering randomly generated field drops and low-percentage enemy drops is something I can't respect, and I don't feel like wasting my time for it. Unfortunately, XCX sort of relies on some of these types of quests in order to progress story and I don't like that.

Oh I agree with a lot of quest relying too much on random items which can be BS.  It didn't bother me too much since I actually spent the first 50 hours of the game pretty much just exploring Primordia, Noctilum and Oblivia on foot, since I was just blown away by the world and wanted to see more.  I also have an unhealthy obsession with constantly fighting enemies stronger then me just to see how strong my current team is.  I would usually see if I could take on enemies at least 10 levels higher then me and if I couldn't I would adjust my equipment, arts and skills and see if that would work. 

I didn't get my first Skell until over 60 hours into the game, and by that time, I was already insanely overleveled and had a **** ton of items already saved up so I was able to do many of the side quests when I started excepting them because I already had the required materials already.  I then tried to rush through the story as fast as I could before finally hitting the fetch quest wall to get the flying part for my Skell, which yeah became annoying.  It is rather funny though since I rushed through most of the story over-leveled but then I reached the final chapters and was underleveled since I stopped exploring and doing side quest because I was trying to finish the story.  The final boss was a real douche since I ended up being the same level as him with the rest of my team several levels lower.  It was pretty awesome though to discover some of the augments I had found from naturally exploring the game earlier ended up giving me the boast I needed after dying a few times since you can't go back to NLA at that section so I was desperately looking for whatever I could to win because I didn't want to restart the game and my earlier adventures are what gave me what I needed.

I actually planned on stopping after I beat the main story but after the plot twist at the end, I wanted to do some of the side quest at the end to see if any of them explain a little more about said twist.  Over the course of doing that I finished some Affinity Quest that helped explain more about the characters with some having some good stories to them which then made me obsessed with completing all of them.  So yeah I got addicted to learning more about the stories of each character and all the different races and lore of the world.  Because I was doing so many quests at once I found doing one usually ended up taking me in the area I needed to complete the other as well as I would usually end up accidentally getting the material I would need for a latter one.

So yeah even though I agree there was a lot of BS, the battle system and overall lore behind the game is what made me look past all that and eventually lead to an unhealthy obsession where I couldn't stop.

Wow, nice job!

I had started the game, but set it down and never got around to picking it back up. Lack of story hurt in that regard - although I'm still excited to play after breaking down my backlog a little bit further.

I agree the main story is weak but I feel Monolith Soft did a great job at the creating the setting and lore behind the game which is what made me want to keep going.  Quit a few of the side quest contain plots that are better then anything in the main story so it's worth getting back into if you really want to get engrossed in the world.

[oohhboy]

Wow, there is a crazy person in this thread, but congratulations on 100% that game, something I haven't completed from burning out. If the game was a lot more focused I would have completed it even if I didn't 100% it. One day I will go back to it.

[MagicCow64]

Yeah, that's a variety of impressive. The game is certainly set up to get you itching to clear all those hexagons, and I felt the call, but I just kind of flamed out on the game about 3/4s of the way through the main story. The mechs are fun to fly around in but I also found they made combat fairly dull and added another layer of equipment micromanagement that I really didn't want at that point of the game. I would have probably kept going to play out the affinity missions, but it's such a pain in the ass to manually assemble different teams in the city that I gave up on that too. 

[Phil]

Last night I was able to Platinum Titanfall 2 on PS4. The final trophy I needed was a gauntlet one where you have to run and shoot through an area with near perfect to beat a specific time. Took about 2 1/2 hours to get the run down to beat the time and get the Platinum

As for my thoughts, here they are in review form:
http://www.superphillipcentral.com/2017/02/titanfall-2-ps4-xb1-pc-review.html

[stalfo]

Lifespeed for the 3DS. The game looks great and runs super smooth, but the game just lacks an IT factor that made me want to keep going back. Ran through story mode and a championship series or two and was done with it.

[Ian Sane]

So I just finished all the endings in 999 for the DS.  It's a pretty old game now but I only got it last year.  Getting the good ending requires getting a different ending first and those two endings only occur if you take a specific path.  The other endings, which are all "bad" ones, can all be reached multiple ways depending on how you do things.  There are numerous rooms you have to escape at different points and there are obvious junctions where you pick from several rooms.  So at first it's fairly easy to do another playthrough where you make sure to hit the rooms you've never played before and that will take you through three playthroughs.  You can fast-forward through dialog you've encountered before but you have to solve the puzzles of the rooms soon.  Each playthrough starts with the same room and you'll get very sick of it very quickly.

So I ended up using a walkthrough in the end to get the proper ending.  There are a couple rooms that only appear on the path to the true ending so when I encountered those I put the faq away and solved the puzzles myself.  I just used to faq to look up puzzles I already solved in previous playthroughs and to make sure that I made all the right decisions as you could easily steer the conversation in the wrong direction and get a bad ending.

I won't go into details but the ending is a little strange and I had to do some Googling to figure out exactly what was going on.  It has some twists that I honestly don't think anyone could guess ahead of time but that's kind of because they involve pseudo-scientific concepts.  You don't expect a story to suddenly present something like telepathy as a real thing, though it is cleverly written where you realize there were hints to it.

I enjoyed it a lot though as the repetition of repeated playthroughs is the only real downside as that becomes a little tedious.  I am now very interested in playing the sequel as I'm curious to see how the story connects to the first game.  Plus getting to play some new puzzles in the true ending after following a faq to repeat sections I already beat for a little while reminded me of how much I enjoy this gameplay the first time around and I'm now hungry for more.

[ejamer]

So I just finished all the endings in 999 for the DS.  ...

So I ended up using a walkthrough in the end to get the proper ending.  ... 


I am now very interested in playing the sequel as I'm curious to see how the story connects to the first game.  Plus getting to play some new puzzles in the true ending after following a faq to repeat sections I already beat for a little while reminded me of how much I enjoy this gameplay the first time around and I'm now hungry for more.

Nice job!


When playing the game, I also used a walkthrough after failing to stumble onto the "true ending" after several playthroughs. It diddn't seem like the game gave you any real clues about how to find the correct path - or if it did, the clues were too subtle for me to notice.


I think the first game had the best (and most insane) story, but there are significant improvements in gameplay with later titles in the series. The second game introduces a sort of conversation "map" so that you can jump into different threads of the game without having to replay from the beginning each time - a huge improvement. Definitely worth doing in my opinion.

[azeke]

Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ (Steam):



The last secret is in my collection. I am at peace.

My second Isaac fever was finally subdued when 500+ hours after i started the game, i beat the last remaining challenge of Afterbirth+.

I took a break after religiously playing and completing old version , but i knew i can't hold out for long. I was waiting for a sale and was watching youtube let's plays of the game on the side to prepare myself. Mainly northernlion and bisnap but also later started watching russian streamer neonomi who did Afterbirth 1001% in 40+ hours last summer.

Coinciding with me starting Rebirth+Afterbirth save file, these months there was also an explosion of sort of Isaac-related content, with both Antibirth and Afterbirth+ and it's mods coming out. It was very exciting times to both play and watch Isaac.




I jumped into Afterbirth after Flash version so all the incremental changes that grew over 2 years since Rebirth dropped on me all at once: new 60fps engine, full proper controller support, fundamental changes to core gameplay, Afterbirth's tanky level 1 bosses, tricky enemies like blue leeches that catch you on your muscle memory of dodging to the side and may other things.

The biggest change from flash version to BoI: Rebirth and onwards is that health is now capped to 10. Now you can't hoard 30+ HP like in Eternal Edition and just mindlessly go ham on similarly overpowered tanky enemies not even bothering paying attention to damage you're taking: no matter the kind of hearts you have their total number can't exceed 10. This caps a limit on grinding you can do and makes the game more skill based.

Abundance of new items added over Flash version tips balance towards the player -- it's so much easier to become overpowered and outright "breaking the game" (any kinda combination to pry any number of items and resources from the game) is easier than ever. See "Binding of Isaac: Rebirth – Death of the Middle Class" article for a good explanation why Rebirth and all it's followup are kinda "broken" in comparison to original game.

Ditching flash in favour of new engine and proper analog movement support also help making the game less random. Low framerate and wonky gameplay made achievements like "beat level such and such without taking any damage" kinda of wash because it was largely a random happenstance rather than a display of your skill.



Rebirth made gameplay a lot tighter allowing for finer movement and dodging. To capitalize on that new precision they added a new character -- Lost that has no HP whatsoever and can't take damage period.

It was a bad idea. Binding of Isaac even if made less random is still not the kind of game that can sustain a character that dies in single hit. There are a LOT of teleporting/jumping enemies, enemies can spawn in right on top of you, suicide bomber enemies that spawn in and charge right away, enemies that can fire lasers from the other side of a screen or from OFF-SCREEN if you are in a big room -- hundreds of reasons how Lost can get hit and each of them ends the run.

Before starting playing Lost i never actually felt the need to restart my runs but with Lost you HAVE to do it to guarantee at least some semblance of survivability -- whether by finding or rerolling into powerful items that can stack on top of each other, boosting damage and then hoping you can kill enemies before they can hurt you. Or luck into getting three items out of 500+ random ones that allow to take SOME hits.

After reading the horror stories of Lost i decided on somewhat unorthodox playthrough to maybe make future Lost struggle easier.

Game gets harder after 4 Mom kills -- "Everything is terrible 1" event activates new enemies, bosses and room layouts. I decided to postpone it as late as possible. In a more natural progression "Everything is terrible 1" happens around hour 10. I managed to avoid it for 75 hours using a number of methods to skip Mom's heart boss and skip directly into Cathedral/Sheol. I even managed to unlock Lost during that time and beat Satan with him.

What finally forced me to finally break that barrier is that by random occurrence i turned into Blue Baby -- a character that otherwise unlocks way later (11 Mom kills while i still had just 3) and just couldn't pass on that chance to do some progress on that character way earlier than i am supposed to.

Funnily after activating "harder game" mode i barely noticed any difference so maybe it was all a waste of time...

But at least playing as Lost forced me play with a controller for finer analog movement after hundreds of hours of playing Binding of Isaac on a keyboard.

Other new characters are Lilith -- she can't shoot herself, but can command other familiar to shoot for her:

Afterbirth had a funny glitch/feature -- if you set game language to Korean, Lilith recharges her active item (which increases number of her familiars) much faster than she is supposed to which kinda breaks the game because you can create huge crowds -- firing squads that annihilate everything that way.

Trying to complete the game as fast as possible will require some planning ahead, especially with my roundabout way of avoiding Mom Heart kills. You should do the most useful challenges and characters unlocks first and that will raise the probability of these items appearing because item pools are still small-ish and not filled out with other, less useful unlocks.

On the other hand useless or outright detrimental unlocks should be done as laste as possible. That's why the very last challenge i did was Suicide King which unlocks a card that kills me (it has it's own uses but is actively bad in most cases for obvious reasons). You don't want this card or other "bad" unlocks to take space in your possible random drop selection and "pollute" it.



Most of the in-game challenges are relatively easy and are just showcases for game's specific item combination gimmicks. However several challenges are extremely hard, like "Speed" challenge where entire game is sped up and you have to beat Mom in less than 15 minutes. It was brutal -- i remember having several close calls where i was literally 2 meters away from reaching the trophy and died because time ran out.

"Ultra Hard" is even harder and arguably the hardest challenge in the game where game doesn't drop hearts ever, you have all curses applied to you, all enemies are champions, and you have to reach the final final final boss of the game.

Greed and Greedier mode with some characters can also be very hard. After some getting used to and figuring out how to abuse room mechanics (Eve's Whore of Babylon, Judas' Book of Belial and Lilith's familiars so on) it becomes much easier. Characters that don't have room effect gimmick are harder. Keeper who is otherwise obnoxious to play as is suprisingly easy in Greed-ier modes but Cain, Blue Baby and especially Lost are brutal.

I had to resort to breaking the game to beat Greedier mode as Lost and Blue Baby. I was starting as Eve because she is the strongest from the start and was breaking the game and upgrading myself until i roll Missing Poster trinket which turns me into Lost.

Finding the last two items i was missing from my collection required breaking too -- i took 2 Steam Sales which reduced the prices of all items in shops to 0 and then just kept buying stuff until i stumbled into Mega Blast and Eden's Soul -- last Devil and Angel items i need to check on my collection page.

Afterbirth+ introduces new feature: Victory Runs and they help immensely with hard characters like Lost and especially Keeper. After completing the game game naturally you can restart it from the beginning with your end-game build and tear everything apart on early levels. You are overpowered from the start and will be fast enough to reach both Boss Rush and Hush in time quite easily. With some luck you can complete character's entire progression (both Angel and Devil line + The Void) in one go.



Whew, what a ride. I have Switch Binding of Isaac cartridge pre-ordered, but i am not sure if i will have the power to do this all over again. But it will be cool to have a physical version with physical manual either way.

[nickmitch]

So I just finished all the endings in 999 for the DS.  ...

So I ended up using a walkthrough in the end to get the proper ending.  ... 


I am now very interested in playing the sequel as I'm curious to see how the story connects to the first game.  Plus getting to play some new puzzles in the true ending after following a faq to repeat sections I already beat for a little while reminded me of how much I enjoy this gameplay the first time around and I'm now hungry for more.

Nice job!


When playing the game, I also used a walkthrough after failing to stumble onto the "true ending" after several playthroughs. It diddn't seem like the game gave you any real clues about how to find the correct path - or if it did, the clues were too subtle for me to notice.


I think the first game had the best (and most insane) story, but there are significant improvements in gameplay with later titles in the series. The second game introduces a sort of conversation "map" so that you can jump into different threads of the game without having to replay from the beginning each time - a huge improvement. Definitely worth doing in my opinion.

I'm going to second those comments.  The sequel's mapping of the timeline is a fantastic addition.  I felt a little frustrated repeating certain elements in 999, and not having to do that again made a hell of a difference.  Still haven't played the 3rd one, but I bought it recently.

[Soren]

I "beat" Gravity Rush 2 (PS4). 

Currently half-way through the story missions. I hate anything having to do with stealth in this game. It seems contrary to Kat's purpose as a gravity shifter. I specially hate missions that have to trying to traverse entire sections of a map, only to fail and have to star the whole thing over again.

The game is visually stunning and a real showcase of the art direction and the PS4's graphical muscle. The Moon and Jupiter modes are and interesting wrinkle but I don't like the way they were presented (a series of interminable kill rooms meant to slowly ease you in to the mechanics, except you pretty much got them the first time around).

[ejamer]

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (GBA)

Great game. For anyone who hasn't played one of the Mario & Luigi series before, the series consists of cute and humorous RPGs set in the Mario universe. Battles are turn-based but allow you to dodge attacks (or do extra damage) by jumping or counter-attacking with hammers at the correct time. Gameplay is tight, but both very linerar and easy. Much of the value comes from humor and presentation instead of deep strategy (although the leveling up system does allow you some customization in where you put extra points).

Comments about this specific entry in the series? The writing and localization work is very entertaining, and does a great job of introducing new characters to the Mario universe (and Fawful makes appearances later, so is probably worth playing just for that bit of story background). Setting the game in the bean kingdom instead of the mushroom kingdom seems disappointing initially, gives lots of room for wacky story-telling and still feels familiar enough to be completely entertaining. There were a couple of odd moments where I needed to upgrade weapons to progress and didn't really know where to go without moderate wandering - in a game this linear, that felt awkward.

Highly recommended, even though I think that Bowser's Inside Story remains the pinnacle of the series.


Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze (Wii U)

I've made my feelings about Tropical Freeze pretty well known in the "now playing" thread. To summarize, I'm not a fan. Game has way too many moments of pure platforming BS to be enjoyable, although it does look and sound very good.

Got this game as a Club Nintendo reward. Wish they would have sent out a soundtrack instead... but can't argue with free.


That's two games down in one day (although both have been in the works for a good while to get to this point). Guess that makes room to start playing Zelda next, and something on my PSP for the upcoming business trip. The Warriors maybe?

[pokepal148]

I beat Ace Attorney 3 which means I just need to do the bonus case for Ace Attorney 1 to finish off the entire first Trilogy. The third game is overall a bit stronger than the second game but the second game's last case still stands as the strongest case in the series so far.

[Khushrenada]

I'm in agreement there. Game 2 Case 4 is really memorable and stays with you no matter how many other cases you encounter. The series has had a hard time topping it. Easily one of the top 3 cases.

The order of games I've played in the series has been AA4, AA1, AA2, AA3, Investigations, AA5, and most likely AA6 before I get around to PWvPL. I haven't played 6 yet but while I've enjoyed things in the games since AA2 I've found that it has been harder for the series to surprise me as it goes on or that it complicates things to its detriment. The final case in AA3 just seemed to go on and on. I get that it was a big finale for the series at that time and trying to really play on a lot that came before but I was so glad when it was over and the Fey storyline seemed to be over with.

If you keep on with the series, I'll be curious about your thoughts but to me it now seems to be in a bit of a rut and it is the offshoots like Investigations and The Great Ace Attorney that interest me more because there are more surprises they can hold by having more new and unknown characters and a bit different gameplay. I wish the series had the guts to have stuck with Apollo and crafting his world. Now they've jammed Apollo in with Phoenix and the series is trying to juggle this whole crew of characters to keep all fans happy while struggling to come up with new ways to build on the characters history. I think they should separate them or start retiring some of the characters.

However, as much as I'd like to get into hashing out the whole series, I don't want to hijack or do it in this thread nor do I have the time needed to get into it all so I'll leave it at that. Glad you are liking it but be forewarned that the series does seem to rely more on the charm of its cast than on amazing cases. (But I still think 4 is worth a play through because I'm a big fan of Apollo, Trucy and Ema Skye perhaps because they were my first introduction to the series but I've preferred them to Phoenix, Maya and Gumshoe.)

[Soren]

I pried myself away from the Switch long enough to finish Shantae Half-Genie Hero on Wii U last weekend. It's an ok game, I would say better than Risky's Revenge but nowhere near as good as Pirate's Curse. I only played the main game once but I think it's enough to make a good opinion of the game overall. The gameplay feels good and Shantae's usual array of powers always feel good. The level design feels a bit lack in the sense that you keep traversing old levels but there's very little that opens up from them. The boss battles also felt a little lacking. There's plenty here to keep you occupied if you love Shantae but if you only want to play one game in the series Pirate's Curse is still the best option.

[ClexYoshi]

Huh. checking through this thread, I never mentioned my completed playthrough of Wild Arms in this thread! well, I have to rectify that!

First, the opening FMV, without commentary:

Oh gosh. <3 I soooooooooooooo wanna play Wild Arms EVERY TIME I watch that.

although, in a way, the intro is a bit misleading. what seems like it's leading up to some sort of Western inspired Anime adventure like Trigun (this game predates the anime, but not the manga), it actually sticks closer to more usual JRPG tropes than one would think. You'll encounter things like a princess and castles that house secrets beneath the castle, a lost and advanced civilization from 1000 years ago that plays a key role in the plights of today, Gemstone based macguffin, powerful monsters that lend the party their strength in the form of equipable stones, and the fuzzy and adorable JRPG mascot character! This is a world of swords and sorcery, there's just a couple of folks who choose to bring guns to a knife fight in this game.

By all accounts, this game SHOULD be a pretty bog standard 32-bit RPG. there's nothing particularly innovative about the battle system other than it uses very rudimentary polygonal graphics. It's turn based, you have one mage lady, one speedy swordsman guy, and one guy who's maybe a bit more defensive than the swordsman but has his powerful guns and tools he can use to level the playing field. besides maybe the mechanic of each of these 'tools' having individual ammo counts and the fact that in a twist on Final Fantasy 1's 'buy spells at shop' mechanic, the mage lady can basically learn any spell at any time in shops and dissolve spells she knows to make different ones, which means you should never have a situation where you don't have the right spells for a dungeon, although her most effective spells are the armor down and the speed down spells to cripple bosses and enemies.

The dungeon exploration is kinda cribbed a bit from Breath of Fire and The Legend of Zelda, where each character has a set of things they get that interact with the overworld, along with universal stuff like lifting crates and throwing them, a really neat dashing mechanic that works a little bit like mother 3's almost... the fact that the dungeons have more of a challenge to navigating them is part of what I find compelling here. some of these puzzles get obtuse and aren't well designed, but most of the time it's pretty intuitive to navigate the many ruins, castles, alien demon ships, ghost boat, caves, and libraries you'll be wandering around in this game. Sometimes they'll even split the party and have each one solving puzzles tailored to them and switching between one another to interact with puzzles in a lost vikings style. actually, that's how the game starts with each of them getting their own mini-campaign. it feels like the heroes of this game get equal billing most of the time. even if it is Rudy getting a lot of the top billing most of the time.

The story here isn't too overly complicated, thank goodness. It meanders at parts, given the heroes basically win the day, and then the game just keeps... going for a while until a new threat emerges... and this happens more than once. other than that, the characters are likable, the world is interesting enough, and the game doesn't suffer TOO bad from what has to be one of the most lauughable translations I've been subjected to in a while (there's a couple of instances where I had to do a double take on the names of things and how in the heck the translation team got from "Seig Zwei" to "Zeik Tuvai")

Regardless, this was enjoyable. I have Wild Arms 2 on my PS3, but that will have to wait for when I'm not drowning in Breath of the Wild (beat that game, but don't feel like doing a write-up) and other games. This wouldn't be a bad series for Sony Computer Entertainment to Dredge up. Media.Visions is still making games for Bandai Namco, so... i'm sure they wouldn't mind doing a Wild Arms project for the PS4!

[ejamer]

Runner 2 (Wii U)


Meh. It's not really my type of game, but I finished it without any real complaints... so I guess that's a recommendation?  Feels like a "love it or leave it" affair for most people though.

[Evan_B]

I remember being absolutely in love with Bit.Trip Runner when I first played it, and I must admit, I felt no sort of passion for Runner 2. While I never knock graphical capability, I think Runner is one series that should have kept its retro aesthetics.