Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

The most recent game I beat was Super Mario Land on Expert mode. To this day, it's such a fun little Mario game that has a certain charm you can't find in any other game in the series besides it's direct sequel Super Mario Land 2.

It was fun to play this one again and beat it on expert mode!

Plus, I can't end this without praising Super Mario Land's soundtrack which is one of the best in the entire Mario Series. Especially the ending theme, which is one of the best tracks on the Game Boy.

Well on this Capcom Fighting Collection, I beat Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge. My initial attempts at Darkstalkers 1 made me think it was gonna be a while before I beat any of these games, but uh, guess not. Not gonna pretend I entirely knew what I was doing the whole time, but pleasantly surprised I even beat one campaign once for these (as short as they are, being an old school fighting game).

Castlevania II Simon's Quest beaten with the best ending

Just beat Mario 64 for the first time, was quite a ride!

Having first seen this game in Toys ‘R’ Us back in 1996, it blew my tiny little mind. Playing through it now I can see how amazing it was for its time, granted, it can be rough in spots now (that camera, argh!), but it was still enjoyable and each level was crammed with neat little secrets and routes. It can be punishingly difficult at times too, didn’t expect that after the breeze that Odyssey was!

The most recent game on Nintendo for me has been Donkey Kong Country Returns on 3DS. Haven't done a 100% run on it, but I unlocked the temple and beat the extra levels.

Most recent games overall have been Vampyr and Mead Crafter. I'd been meaning to play Vampyr for the entire lockdown. You know, because of the Spanish Flu backstory. I'd installed it in 2020 and I only started playing it this summer. Did a tea totaller run.
Mead Crafter's a little match 3 game about making booze out of fruits, spices and berries. Was free on Steam and was fun to go through. Had to strategize upgrade purchases to get a successful run to completion.

I've finally beaten Batman: Arkham Knight. Took me a long time to get to this one, considering how I played Arkham Origins before Knight had even come out. That's what happens when you don't keep up with newer hardware I guess.

My thoughts aren't dramatically different from others, in that this feels like another Arkham game but longer than it needed to be. Not surprising but a shame since, especially in hindsight, the relatively small size of Arkham City is something that I really appreciate. It was exactly as long as it needed to be, no more no less. But I am a bit kinder to some aspects than some people are. Like while it isn't perfect, the batmobile is used as well as anyone could've possibly hoped for and feels like a quality addition to the game (even if "running over criminals only shocks them" is one of the dumbest things in anything ever). And while I have issues with the story, it didn't feel as underwhelming or redundant as I heard other people say about it. It felt like a worthy sequel, in that regard. I will say despite being way too long though, after Xenoblade 2 its easy to see how much worse "needlessly extending the game's length via how it does sidequests" could be. Like I've played this game maybe 1/5 as long, despite having gotten the true ending (yes I did get every riddler trophy and every major sidequest in general).

I finished 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim today. The story was a little overly complicated in my opinion; I still can't fully get my head round everything that happened. But I got the gist and it's certainly very clever and has a beautiful art style, so it's definitely worth a look if you like visual novels or narrative-based games.

The strategy segments are nothing special but they're fun enough, although the upgrade system is a bit overwhelming with 13 characters to upgrade and almost no guidance as to what to prioritise. The final battle took me a few tries but I eventually managed to win with 1% of the terminal's defence left; another second and I'd have been dead. So that was satisfying, but I don't think I'll play the post-game battles at the moment.

Beat Digimon Survive four, five days ago and finished the True Route about two days ago. Currently trying to get the other routes while collecting items I missed. Then hopefully, I could get back to Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux again since I left that game just as I was about to beat it so that I could play Digimon. lol

Weakwood throne. I only paid a few gold points for it (49 gold points) it’s not worth it.

This year I have beaten some amazing VNs on Switch. I seem to be struggling more than usual to finish jrpgs but with the narrative focus of VNs the payoff is seeing it through.

Disco Elysium, 13 Sentinels and AI Nirvana Initiative have all been top tier. Maybe it’s because 2 are ports from a couple of years ago but it seems the ‘genre’ has classics dropping all at once.

Lost Planet 3 on Steam Deck. Incredibly mediocre. The best thing going for it is the story.

@JoeDiddley
Always nice to see a fellow VN supporter/fan. We could use more of them outside Japan.

Well, i recently beat 13 Sentinels and now Live a Live. 13 Sentinels really was kinda awesome with its story and i found the gameplay good enough for what it was, immersed me well enough. Live a live surprised me greatly with the little grind and a very decent endgame, the story was meh, but the presentation is awesome, especially the music and some of these flashy animations

I beat monster boy the cursed kingdom. Overall, decent game that lightly reminded of what a zelda II remake could be in this decade. It was good, puzzles were fine, combat was decent, but the whole world really stole the show. Between the art syle and scenery, it couldn't have been better.

My only real gripe with the game was how cryptic it got and some difficulty spikes. The final boss felt like a push over compared to some of the dungeon obstacles with standard enemies. And the confusion surrounding some of the requirements that you'd never possibly guess were a little frustrating. Overall, solid game. I wouldnt mind this team tackling a zelda II remake. 7.5-8/10.

i beat Shin Megami Tensei V yesterday. i loved the gameplay and the story, originally i thought i was gonna get the true ending by Saving Tokyo. but, i got the chaos ending instead.
also i'm so sad that tao left my party before the final boss! she was my best healer that i had in the team. luckily, i had a supportive demon that can heal me and buff me. so i used her up to the final boss.

Completed Banjo Kazooie on NSO, damn that camera when firing eggs was stupid, but completed it with all Jiggies and Notes but didnt complete Bottle's Jigsaws, no way.
Hoping for Banjo Tooie (always thought it was Banjo Tootie because of the sister) to turn up.
Anyways only used the month fee thing so I could get the N64 controller, will re-sub when and if Tooie turns up.
Back to Bug Fables.

I thought the same too. Even though I have my problems with the story, I did like that part of the plot, as it felt different from the usual SMT chaos routes (which usually involve ideals of freedom rather than saving anyone at all). It still technically aligns with the principles of chaos routes, in that it's a free-for-all situation where all the demons/gods can roam around as they please, regardless of the chaos it causes, but it felt more justified than the previous chaos routes this time, because previous chaos routes were more of a "survival of the fittest" situation. I feel like Koshimizu the prime minister was going for more of a democracy solution, in that not one god would dictate how the world should be.

Also, there's technically no "true end" in SMT games, which is something I love about them. You literally get to decide how the story should end, regardless of how ridiculous and immoral the ending is. The neutral route might feel like the true end most of the time in SMT games, but I think in SMT V's case, it's definitely a more depressing/bleak ending this time, since the protagonist literally has no one knowing that he "saved" the world. Even then, the gods weren't exactly wrong about humanity eventually succumbing to their desires, so you didn't really save the world so much as bought them some time before their inevitable downfall again.

I think SMT V has some nice ideas, but they do feel undercooked, which is my problem with the story. I just didn't feel as impacted by the story as I did with other SMT games like SMT IV and Strange Journey: Redux. It felt like SMT V was trying to juggle multiple stories and ideas. Ah well.

Finally beat SMT Strange Journey: Redux at long last, Neutral Route. It's been a long, challenging and strange journey indeed. The dungeon crawling gets kinda tedious at times, but the story was thoroughly enjoyable. Arthur is the best Neutral Hero in the SMT franchise, of course, and I would've saluted him at the end. lol

The thing that stood out for me the most for Strange Journey among the other titles, aside from having easily the best storyline, the comradery you feel with the other members of the Red Sprite was something that wasn't as strong with the other characters of the franchise, except SMT IV which had just as excellent (if not better) character development. You definitely feel like you're playing a space marine in James Cameron's Aliens, landing in a hostile universe unprepared, trying to survive and make your way home.

I think in terms of making you care about the Law/Chaos/Neutral alignments though, SMT IV still has Strange Journey beat in terms of emotional impact because the former actually showed you what you're fighting for and defending rather than having a bunch of bosses do exposition dumps (which SJ kinda does to some extent, albeit not as badly as SMT: Nocturne). With that said, I think SJ still did an excellent job in reflecting humanity's flaws and how we're damaging the Earth, something SMT IV didn't touch on as much when it comes to asking why we should choose the Neutral Route and protect humans. In that sense, SMT IV's more pro-chaos/demons focused while SJ's more anti-neutral/humans focused in terms of storytelling.

But man, regardless of the flaws, SJ did an excellent job with its cutscenes and dialogue. It really puts in effort to dig deep and make you care about the characters and their point-of-view, regardless of how flawed their pov is. I think in terms of Law-aligned heroes though, Zelenin might be the least extreme in her views. Most Law/Chaos-aligned reps have extremist views in the SMT universe, of course, but Zelenin's methods, while still morally questionable, didn't seem as damaging as other Law reps which essentially involved genocide and bigotry, especially when we don't even know if her "song" is considered true brainwashing or not. I kinda felt bad for her in the end tbh. But yeah, I'd say the three alignment reps are probably the 2nd most fleshed out ones, just after SMT IV of course, because SMT IV did such an excellent job all around with its character development.

I still haven't played NG+ yet, but apparently, there's a new route waiting for you once you get to know better the mysterious assassin, Alex that was trying to kill you. Looking forward to that.

But for now, it's time for some Soul Hackers on the 3DS. Hopefully, I could finish it soon as Soul Hackers 2 is coming out in about a week. I was quite looking forward to this one because it basically created many new demon designs that many modern SMT games currently use, so I'm interested to see how those demons fit in that universe.

With Vampire Savior down, that's two Darkstalkers games beaten. Entirely by coincidence, that's also the fourth short 90s game and Ps1 era game beaten recently, with three of those games being both (even if these are the arcade versions for Darkstalkers).

Beating an old fighting game means nothing because they're so short as single player games but I'm not good at most fighting games so I'm pleasantly surprised. I can definitely see the improvements in each game in this series, even if not in the same way an expert would.

I finished the storyline of Kirby Star Allies just now. 🙂
I unlocked the other challenging mode after that, but I know I'm not masochist so I will not torture myself in very hard challenge.
So far I could finish the stages pretty easy, rarely lost my life due to pretty easy gameplay.
I enjoyed this Kirby game than Mario game despite I still have very low hype with Kirby franchise.
I gave it 7/10 for Kirby Star Allies.