Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

Beat Valkyria Chronicles last night. Real fun game with really great strategy gameplay and a pretty great story and cast of characters. Definitely got me extremely excited to play the other games.

I beat Fire Emblem Awakening last night. On casual though for my first try of the series so I’m not sure if that counts?

I’m trying to complete games I buy now as I got too guilty of buying lots of Switch games and never finishing them because I’d play another shiny new game that came out. Now I try and save the new game as a treat for finishing the current one. This works... occasionally.

For the first time in my life I got all 30 parts in the original Pikmin. I've beaten the game before but I've never been able to get all of the parts. It wasn't too hard though so I guess I was just bad at strategizing as a kid

Since the start of the year:
Amstrad:
Killapede
Nebulus
Blues Brothers
Fantasy World Dizzy
Yie Ar Kung-Fu
Zypnaps
Arkanoid
Beyond the Ice Palace
Masters of Space
NEIL Android

Switch:
Pokemon: Let's Go Eevee
Grim Fandango

Megadrive:
Comix Zone
F-117 Night Storm

Diablo 3 campaign. It was great, got better as it went on I thought.
Now for adventure mode.

Dragon Quest XI (PS4) - This was a pretty good time. I think I still prefer VIII (I very much preferred it's cast), but XI is still a very solid JRPG with some awesome moments and an absolutely gorgeous world.

Unravel (PS4) - A very charming and stunning looking puzzle platformer with a touching narrative. I got stumped a few times, but usually nothing I couldn't figure out after a few tries (except a little uphill section in the final level. That was a pain in the butt, but worth it in the end). It was a great way to break up the grind of DQXI's post game.

To add to my previous list:

Megadrive:
Cheese Cat-Astrophe Starring Speedy Gonzales
Castelvania: Bloodlines
Crack Down
Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine
Gain Ground
Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi
Sonic 3D Blast
Space Harrier II
Vectorman
Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle
Bonanza Bros.
Ecco Jr.
Bio-Hazard Battle
Ristar
Columns III
ESWAT: City Under Siege

3DS:
3D Galaxy Force II

Pretty stoked, managed to finish 31 games over 31 days and take a huge chunk out of my Megadrive backlog while I was at it, less than 30 to go. Ristar, Gain Ground and Bonanza Bros. were quite fun. Cheese Catastrophe is finally out of the way, the last physical cart that I needed to finish. Ecco Jr. was quite relaxing in comparison to the original Ecco game. Still have tides of time to do though...

Beat NSMBUDX last night and finished the campaign of Ace Combat 7 the day before. Still have to do a few more play through but it's a terrific game! Oh and my kids and I finally beat Ghaleem in WoL too (yes I know he's not the "final" boss, but we still felt accomplished)

In my journey to invest myself in the RPG side of all things Mario, I made it to the end credits of Super Paper Mario this past weekend.

Positives

• Story: While I wouldn't call it GotY material, it was pretty well written. The motivation for Mario & Co. to save the day is outlined quite well and even brought home to the player in some drastic aspects. This game becomes pretty dark at times...something that I didn't think I'd be typing about a Mario RPG. Then again, this is Nintendo, and they can pull some pretty dark moments out of thin air sometimes. I suppose what was more surprising was that this game was full of them.
• Writing: The writing in this game was well done and pretty entertaining. I had thought that Color Splash had some decent writing, but this game almost puts that one to shame in comparison.
• Characters: Many of the characters were unique and memorable. I found the main villain's lackeys quite entertaining in particular.
• Music: While I've played games with more memorable soundtracks, some tracks like Soft Light, In The Darkness, and the main theme for O'Chunks stick out in my mind.
• The Pixls: Many of these were useful and were introduced in some crazy ways. Some were more useful than others, true, but overall I enjoyed using them.
• The very concept of Francis, plus his castle and robo-cat butlers....And the dating sim. I even found that entertaining.

Neutral

• The world/exploration: While I felt that this was done really well in some levels due to Mario's ability to flip dimensions, others seemed fairly linear and didn't have much to them. That's not to say there weren't any "Oh, that's cool!" moments. I did enjoy the different renderings for each world.
• Poor, poor Luigi. I feel like he occasionally gets the short end of the stick, but SPM "ended his game" twice, had him be forcibly brainwashed, and to cap everything off, the poor guy is controlled AGAIN by a magical delinquent. Guys in green just don't catch a break.

Negatives

• Switching between characters and Pixls: Is there any other way to do this besides going to the pause menu and selecting each from there? This seemed to ruin the pacing sometimes when you had to do a lot of switching in order to solve different puzzles and environmental obstacles.
• Recipes and Catch Cards: I suppose this isn't really a true negative, but I didn't really find much motivation to bother with either of these collect-a-thons very much. Though the recipe ladies are both entertaining....

All in all, I wholeheartedly recommend this game. It's an odd RPG/platforming hybrid, but the two elements mashed together here seem to (mostly) work. I really don't understand the complaints about this one, but that could be because I've been playing the Paper Mario games in reverse order...ignoring Sticker Star, which I'm skipping.

@Blitzenexx
Super Paper Mario Wii was the Darkest and the Scariest Mario games ever.
Who cannot stand for disturbing eerie sounds of World of Nothing and River Twygz Bed ? 😱

@Anti-Matter: I was pleasantly surprised at how dark it was at times. I admittedly knew about Mimi before starting the game since that character has appeared on a few YouTube lists, but some of the other dark moments took me by (pleasant) surprise. Not just dark moments either, but there were a few that definitely hit you in the feels.

It's amazing that the game pulled off an E rating back in 2007....

@Blitzenexx
Super Paper Mario was rated "E" for Eerie contents. 😱

Finally finished Nights of Azure 2.
I enjoyed it, although im a little annoyed as I came really close to getting the good ending but just ran out of time.
Will probably replay on ng+ but not for a while.
Now on to Rayman Legends.

I don't cry from works of fiction. Though I consume an inordinate amount of anime, books, games and movies, probably far more than is healthy, I don't cry. I can name 4 things, one book, two anime, and one western TV show that, in my 27 years, have made me cry.

Planetarium, the visual novel recently released on Switch, a remarkably simple presentation with at most, 15-20 still images and maybe 4 animations, is number 5. What a powerful story! I don't know if I can recommend it, because it is so overwhelmingly sad... But if you're looking for something very different, this might well be a good choice. I can tell you though, I absolutely loved it. It might have been a mere 3ish hours long, but I will remember it for a very long time. Powerful and Sad. Those are the biggest words that come to mind. But close behind them is important.

Just finished my third or fourth playthrough of Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness on the PS Vita, making it my sixth completed game in 2019. There are still several more routes and endings to see, but I think I'm done with this for the moment.

The game doesn't have a strict timeline placement, but it seems to fit somewhere early in the anime's first season... which is weird, given the suspenseful and tight timeline that season seemed to run on, but nevermind. For a bit of background, Psycho-Pass is a cyberpunk property, heavily inspired by 90's Western science-fiction cinema, where Japan has isolated itself from the rest of the world and abandoned traditional notions of law and order in favor of entrusting policing decisions in their society to a seemingly omnipresent computerized system called Sibyl. People in this society are regularly scanned to determine their "psycho-pass," which gives a basic overview of their emotional stability and how inclined they might be to engage in criminal activity. Anyone judged to be a threat to society is considered a "latent criminal," taken into custody, and held in detention centers as they receive treatment (which, apparently, almost never ends up actually tipping their psycho-pass back into a range where the Sibyl System would be comfortable with releasing them). A select few who show an aptitude for the work are reprieved from detention to work as "Enforcers," who work as detectives and help take latent criminals into custody, and "Inspectors," who oversee and manage the actions of Enforcers out in the field. You have the option of playing as two game-original characters: an Inspector named Nadeshiko Kugatachi, and an Enforcer named Takuma Tsurugi. They end up working alongside major characters from the anime series to deal with the threat posed to their society by a self-aware A.I. named Alpha.

My first immediate problem with the game is in how the original characters are developed. While the dynamic personalities of the established cast from the anime are well-represented, these new characters are... kind of boring. Nadeshiko (who I primarily played as) is an ostensibly emotionless amnesiac who seems to be weirdly competent at everything she does, turning into her into a very flat Mary Sue type character. While she become a bit more interesting as her deep connections to the plot are revealed, there's just not a lot to her, and her becomes more like an audience surrogate than anything. The major plot twist around her role in the story is the most obvious and telegraphed thing in the world, unfortunately. Takuma has a bit more of a personality, but still barely enough to keep him from seeming pretty generic. Most of the fun in this game comes from seeing how they interact with the established cast. There's really nothing to the Alpha character that you haven't seen in a million sci-fi stories about out-of-control A.I. who have good intentions but only end up causing massive amounts of suffering.

In visual novels, having choices that directly affect the outcome of a plot is important, and Psycho-Pass definitely has that. While the events driving the narrative on a broader level don't really change based on what you do, the angle your characters approach these situations from does pretty drastically change. It's also important for the player to understand how their actions are affecting the evolution of the plot, however, and there are so many little choices to make in this game where it's uncertain what the effect on the plot will be. You're prompted throughout the game about whether you want to use a supplement or not (that's used to promote mental clarity and a 'good hue' in the person taking it), and while it seems like this would directly relate to the stabilization or deterioration of your character's hue, I chose to ignore all supplements in my first play-through, and it never seemed to have much of an impact on what happened with my character. You'll be given a long list of actions to take in a situation, with most of them often resulting in similar outcomes, but every once in a while something innocuous will seemingly have a large effect on the characters. It'd also be helpful if the game immediately signaled which decisions were momentous, but it often doesn't give you any indication of the importance of a decision until well after you make it, when the game will seemingly randomly pop up a graphic telling you that you've reached a turning point. There's no flowchart to keep all these actions and reactions straight, though, and these graphics often doesn't seem to occur close to when you make a choice, so I'm not sure what the point of this is, as it's certainly not meant for the player's benefit.

The biggest factor going against the game, however, is how little respect it show for the player's time. In addition to the previous mentioned problem of the game not really making it clear what combination of actions lead to what outcomes, it has this nasty habit of forcing you to read slight variations of the same text and dialogue over and over if you're going for multiple playthroughs to see various endings. Most VNs I've played only include new text when it makes sense to change things up, depending on what choices you've made in a playthrough, and will typically skip all previously read segments, allowing you to quickly parse old material to arrive at something new. But it often seems like the game will force you to manually click through large chunks of text (10+ minutes of reading, at least), if there's a slightly altered line here or there. It makes replaying the game a pain in the keister, because who wants to re-read the same reams of text over again. I feel like there must have been a better solution to this, and it's what ultimately caused me to duck out before fully completing all of the endings in this game.

Finally, the localization is a bit shoddy in this, with typos abound and awkward sentence structures that don't really make sense from the perspective of a native English speaker.

I'm afraid I've made this sound pretty dreadful so far, but, on the contrary, I think this game had a few redeeming qualities to it. The presentation as a whole is quite good, with vibrant animated character portraits, full (Japanese) voice acting, and the same excellent score used throughout the anime series. Characters from the anime series are pretty authentically portrayed. The plot itself isn't... bad, it just does nothing new with the premise. What it does get right, crucially, is the world-building. While the Psycho-Pass anime is intelligent and well-crafted, it focuses on its central themes to the exclusion of everything else. Mandatory Happiness gives the characters a bit more downtime and, as a result, allows the writers more of an opportunity to discuss aspects of Japanese society that were never addressed in the TV show, helping to make the setting feel much more fleshed out and convincing. The anime never had the time for a character to mull over fashion trends surrounding holographic technology or the social stigma around eating food fashioned from natural ingredients, for example. While we know that Enforcers aren't allowed to go out on their own, you never got a sequence where you saw the hoops a female latent criminal working for the government might have to jump through to do something as simple as go out shopping for clothing. These details were extremely rewarding and, honestly, were much more interesting than the main story. Mandatory Happiness also lacks the juvenile fixation on extreme content that the TV show had in spades (these people have guns that, in the anime, made people literally explode in thick showers of gore, which always struck me as absurd; that still happens here, but it's not depicted on-screen, and the game doesn't linger on the violence, instead choosing to highlight how the violence impacts the other people involved). The writing here is smart and interesting, and while Alpha isn't a great villain, it at least mostly lacks the pretentious twit of an antagonist from the anime who constantly quotes literature and invokes "free will" to defend the horrifying serial murders and terrorism he regularly sponsors.

There are a lot of sound files and CGs to unlock in the post-game. More crucially, there's a little puzzle game you can play on the side where you have to combine tiles in a grid to form specific numbers; it's challenging (on higher levels), cute, and I honestly enjoy it more than the main game itself.

While there's a lot in this game I've yet to experience endings-wise, I've unlocked three true endings and a few bad endings, so I feel like I've mostly experienced what this title has to offer. Overall, to summarize, while I enjoy the world-building and somewhat more expansive scope of this game, in addition to the way it fleshes out character from the TV show, I don't think it can escape fundamental problems with its narrative, characters, and the way it manages decisions and previously read dialogue. Honestly, if you decide to play it, just follow a walkthrough to get the endings. It gets a 5/10 from me.

i've Finally beat Persona 4 a few days ago.
i have to say i liked all the characters. i only completed Yosuke and Teddie's Social Links and mange to beat the true ending boss. hopefully in my next run i'll be able to get everyone's Social Links.

@Aozz101x Dude what the hell I came here just to say that i beat persona 4 lmao.

I recently beat it about 2 weeks ago and have started persona 3 (psp version). persona 4 was honestly one of the best times ive ever had with a video game. fantastic cast of characters, music, story, and just overall vibe. cant wait to play 5 eventually (hopefully on switch). p4 remains one of the only games to give me an empty feeling after completing, looking forward to more of this series.

I finished The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D yesterday afternoon after logging just over 60 hours (according to my 3DS's log). This was my first time playing the game, and can I just say...Wow. What a deliciously dark, interesting, and impactful game. I can definitely see how it surpasses Ocarina of Time in the eyes of some. The plot was interesting, as were many of the characters. The NPCs actually have a pattern to their lives when compared to the residents of Hyrule in OoT. Many of the side quests (the meat of this game, it can be argued) were intriguing. The dungeons were (mostly) creative and challenging, though Snowhead almost had me falling for the power button at one point. Most of the bosses (minus Gyorg) were also quite fun. There are many memorable quotes and moments, unique series enemies, and impactful tracks to be found here. Termina was wonderful to explore, many of the masks had useful and/or interesting effects....Yeah, I could just drone on about the positives of this game. Heck, I even think that Tatl is more fleshed out and less annoying than Navi.

The only (very minor) complaints that I have about this game are the added fishing holes since there's really no point to them other than to say that you've caught everything in them. While I think the complaints about not having enough time to do stuff in this game is overblown (especially when you slow it down), they also aren't completely unwarranted.

I highly recommend Majora's Mask 3D to any Zelda fan and, heck, most gamers in general. Some (but not all) aspects of it surpass OoT in my book. It's a definite contender for my Zelda Top 5, but that list is already difficult enough to compose....

I just beat Smash Ultimate's World of Light mode. I finally got the true ending by beating both Galeem and Dharkon in a single battle! Quite unexpected that I got to play as Master Hand, as well. There were some frustrating battles and there aren't any stages to go through, but otherwise I thought it was fun.

Finished Cuphead, making it my seventh beaten game in 2019.

Structurally and narratively, this game is pretty basic. You play as Cuphead, who gets greedy in a casino and ends up losing his soul to the devil in a game of dice. He'll allow you to keep your soul, however, if you collect the souls of other cartoon people and bring them to him. This... is pretty much the extent of plot justification you'll find here, other than a few short dialogues, which is fine, because this game absolutely does not require a story of any interest. What the game is selling is a boss rush (not, fully, there are a few "run and gun" stages where you can collect coins to buy new weapons and charms, but more on that later) with tight controls, creative boss fights, and an utterly flabbergasting aesthetic. It's hard to overstate how overwhelming the game's sense of style can be: I'm afraid all I can say is that it's like a Max Fleischer cartoon has come to life and is presently doing its best to try and kill you. As with those often subversive old cartoons, there's a kinetic and often surreal animism at work that makes almost every object on-screen feel unique and possessed of a sense of agency (and malice, since these are fights). It's difficult to imagine anyone with even the slightest love for animation not falling head-over-heels for the presentation in this game. The 'old timey cartoon' style extends to the music as well, which is fantastic and reflects the styles that would have been more popularly employed in media during America's early twentieth century.

So, the design of the game itself is incredibly limited, but the few things it does it does incredibly well. It's hard to even think of an action-platformer I've played with more fun and creative boss fights than this, even putting aside the visuals. This game is positively bursting with creativity.

I mentioned run and gun stages and, while they're fine and well-designed, they're few in number and don't make much of an impression, as they're reasonably short and straight-forward affairs. This is fine, though, because, coin collecting aside, they serve their purpose as a small breather after a particularly exhausting boss encounter, which is how I used them.

The game is divided into three or so worlds, each one with an explorable overworld that has hidden coins and small quests to complete. They're nothing too deep, but they add a nice puzzle element to the game.

Speaking of a puzzle element, while the game technically lacks a post-game, you can go back in after beating the devil and complete all of the bosses on Expert difficulty, and, if you manage to beat them perfectly, earn an S-Rank. I'm not sure that there's much of anything to be gained from doing so, but mastering the game's bosses (I've only managed a few) on Expert difficult really unveils new dimensions to the gameplay. Even after you've memorized the enemy's attack patterns and learned how best to deal with it, to get the highest rating, you'll still need to choose the weapons that have a high enough DPS to kill it under 2 minutes (required to get the S-Rank) while still not exposing yourself to unnecessary risks. And, as I've found, there's an ideal combination of weapons in this regard for almost every boss. From that point on, it's down to pure practice as you enter a kind of zen state in your attempts to fully grok the enemy's movements and achieve sweet, sweet perfection. As an illustration of this, I sat down to S-Rank a few of the easiest bosses the other night, and looked a while later to find that five hours had passed and that, unbeknownst to me, it was three in the morning. This is the sort of zen madness I've been subjecting myself to, because, even though I'm not a completionist, I have so much fun playing this game that I didn't want to stop engaging with it. I've done so only in the interest of continuing to work on my backlog, and because there are a few bosses I feel I have no hope to perfectly beat on Expert difficulty. I'll probably continue returning to the game periodically to challenge the various bosses on this higher difficulty anyway, though.

I would put this up against many of the best AAA games released this gen, exclusive or otherwise. It's top-tier stuff, and absolutely indicative of what independent developers can achieve with proper funding and a solid driving vision. It's also the sort of brutally difficult and old-school-in-design game that we'd never see from a big enough developer. While it's not perfect (run and gun stages aren't incredible like the bosses; no post-game; dialogues would have been even better as animated cutscenes; a lack of in-game compensation for fully mastering the bosses; etc.), what's done right here is incredibly good, and this is the most fun I've had with a game in a number of months. 9.5/10