Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

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.

Just beat Darksiders III on the Switch

I ran through the whole game just from the cartridge (no patches at all). The game is perfectly playable even though there are some FPS drops.

I am big fan of the series and I love the fact that ALL Darksiders games are on the Switch and in physical form

I finally beat Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations. And I have come to realize that the trilogy in its entirety is one of the best games I've ever played, with the third game being my absolute favorite.

Story: The story in T&T is absolutely phenomenal. It is an epic conclusion to the past two games and the third. It introduces a couple of new main characters but mainly reprises some favorites from the first two. The first couple of cases, also potentially known as the "filler" cases, are excellent. They're their own contained stories but they still manage to be intriguing and fun to solve. However, the REAL meat and potatoes of this game come with the last two cases, Turnabout Beginnings and Bridge to the Turnabout. Bridge to the Turnabout is easily my favorite case in the entire trilogy. It is a stellar culmination of the stories of the past two games and links some stories together that you may not have thought were all that important. And that ENDING, oh man. I was not expecting to get as emotional as I did, but my goodness that was a perfect end to the story. “A lawyer only cries once it’s all over.”

Characters: Trials and Tribulations introduces two new characters vital to the overarching story: Dhalia Hawthorne and Godot . Both of these characters are fantastic, but Godot really takes the cake. This character’s personality, motive, and background are incredibly intriguing throughout the game. They start out as a mysterious figure bent on destroying your life, but over time, especially in the last couple of cases, you start to see who this person truly is and what their goal is. It’s incredibly satisfying to unfold. The secondary characters in the “filler” cases are great as well, with all of them having super unique personalities and designs.

Music: This game has one of my favorite character themes of all time. Of course, I am referring to “The Fragrance of Black Coffee”:

This song fits Godot’s character so remarkably well. It’s relaxed and laid back, similar to Godot. And yet, there’s a tinge of mystery to it. It’s amazing how over time, the meaning of this song changes. As you get to know Godot better, this theme starts to take on a new meaning. What was once a confident and laid-back tune transforms into a sad, melancholic melody. Good stuff right there. The rest of the music the game has to offer is excellent as well, with Jean Armstrong’s theme one of the best as well.

Gameplay: The gameplay here is pretty much on par with the first two games. The Magatama has a lot of use here, which I don’t mind. As I said, though, it’s practically identical to the first two games so there’s not really much to go into.

Conclusion: So yeah, this is definitely my favorite Ace Attorney game of the ones I’ve played so far. It has the strongest and most rewarding story, which is the main thing I’ve really come to care about with this series. It does still suffer from some difficulty spikes, though. There are some parts of the game that I feel are a little too cryptic, and it becomes confusing to tell what piece of evidence I need to present. Other than that, though, this game is absolutely excellent. This is easily one of the best games I have ever played. So yeah! 10/10

So with T&T being completed, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy comes to a close. I was NOT expecting to get into this series as much as I did. I figured I would have liked the games, but I had no idea that this would have become one of my new favorite series. The story, characters, and music just resonated with me on a level that I had never anticipated. The games, unfortunately, do show their age a little bit with some odd difficulty spikes and obscure puzzles to solve. Also, I have one issue with the trilogy release itself: Some sound effects are still oddly compressed-sounding, sort of like Capcom just straight-up missed these sounds when remastering the game. Also, I played this game with a controller on PC, but sometimes the UI would only show the keyboard controls, not the controller’s UI. These things were a little distracting, but they are also pretty much the only issues I have with the trilogy release itself. With the completion of this trilogy, I do believe that I can gift myself the title of “Ace Attorney fan.” I now have my sights on The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. Hopefully, Capcom will continue to port these games to PC and consoles. 9/10

Just finished DUSK. What a lovely game! It has rough "old-school" graphics but it has atmosphere for such an action packed game

Loved every bit of it!!!

Today I finished Lego Star Wars The Skywalker Saga after 105 hours. It was a pleasant ride all the way. I did everything there was to do since it is an easy game. What I enjoyed the most was completing the galaxy map. And the atmosphere was great too thanks to the music. If you complete episode IV to VI first you get every character you need for 100%. A little warning though. The game is still quite buggy. I experienced many gamefreezes, crashes and some glitches. But thankfully nothing really game breaking and to be honest I was not even really annoyed, because the game is good fun.

Finally finished SMT: Soul Hackers. The ending did partially make the over experience a little better, the characters aren't terrible or anything (just terribly generic teenagers with attitude), and even its interesting theme of online addiction/escapism is still as relevant today as it was when the game was released (when the Internet was still thought of as a mystical object capable of hacking thee NSA with ease). However, much like SMT V, it all feels a little undercooked, not to mention being a very, very short story that barely fleshes out its characters as much as I would have preferred. I know I give Persona games a hard time, but I'd take the more charming cast of Persona games any day over these broad caricatures from Soul Hackers. The characters feel like prototype versions of Persona characters, but with the campy '90s hacking traits attached. Of course, Atlus would come to refine the "teenagers with attitude" trope down the line from Persona 3 onwards.

Something else I wish the game would implement more of as well as the connection to the Devil Summoner games, because I'm pretty sure characters from those games do appear (minus Raidou), but they've made small cameos that barely have any weight to the story. I feel like if they have more significant roles, it would've made the story at least more interesting, because even though I know little about those characters from the previous games, they feel far more interesting than these generic teens, especially Rei Reiho. I was far more interested in Rei's story than whatever's going on with these hackers.

In addition, the dungeons are bland and lack any unique features or traps. Most of them are glorified mazes with dead ends to keep you doing a lot of backtracking, but that's about it. From what I heard about Soul Hackers 2, it seems like they didn't really improve this flaw of the dungeon design either.

I do like the demon designs though, and like I've mentioned before, a lot of the demon designs you see in the newer SMT games, they originated from Soul Hackers. Plus, the existence of loyalty among demons that would cause them to disobey you feels refreshing and realistic among the SMT games. While it's similar to how Pokémon would disobey you if you don't have enough badges, I'd say the loyalty system in Soul Hackers feels less contrived and more natural; if a demon has just joined you, it makes sense that you'd be strangers and they would have no reason to obey you at all. It's unfortunate that I've never seen this unique loyalty system outside of Soul Hackers, and I doubt it would ever be implemented ever again in future SMT titles.

There were other interesting gameplay features as well, like the cute little Nemechi that totally didn't feel like it was cashing in on the Pokémon trend at all... But even if it feels like a Pokémon copy, the Nemechi does spice things up enough to make the game stand out from the gloomier and grittier SMT titles. In fact, everything about Soul Hackers feels flashier and more stylish than a typical SMT game, largely because of its cyberpunk aesthetic.

Overall, a 6/10. Not the worst JRPG ever, but just very passable. Now let's play some Devil Survivor.

Completed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shredder's Revenge. The game is nice, especially the atmosphere and visuals. Those no hit level were really hard but also fun. Took me some hours to finish stage 8. Pizza Party mode is fun, though I had difficulties to see anything on my first tries. It is just so chaotic. It would be cool if the characters had more than one line when loading for a super finisher. But muting is thankfully an option.

I am very much looking forward to the Cowabunga collection.

I have finished Transformers Battlegrounds PS4 storyline this morning.
It was a decent tactic game with Transformers characters.
The game was easy enough on the easiest level setting and I quite enjoyed the game.
After finishing the storyline, now I can revisit the game for unlocking every remaining abilities for the Transformers characters.
I gave it 6 / 10.
Not bad but not really wow either.

Finished Kirby's Return to Dream Land Wii (physical on Wii U via Wii Mode) a few days ago. It's my first try at a more "modern" Kirby. Overall it's a quality game between the music, "super" and regular copy abilities, and some challenging platforming sections. The plot was enough to keep the player going but wasn't much to write home about. It seems that the best factor for this one is the easy switch in/out for local multiplayer, but this isn't something I took advantage of.

Finished Dodgeball Academia. Cool game with funny characters and interesting gameplay.

Finally finished Final Fantasy VII. Not sure anything could live up to the hype I've heard on it over the years, but I definitely enjoyed it and it is far and away my favorite of the three FFs I've played (I and VI being the others).

I finished Bioshock Infinite. I said a ton of nasty stuff about this game years ago. I don't know what came over me to finish it, but here we are. I loved this game. To the atmosphere, the art style holds up wonderfully; gunplay feels great too. It feels a ton better than most games released in the 360 eras. The story hooked me like the first one, and to me, it was worth it. Add the fact that Elizabeth is cute as sin; the faces she made throughout this game made me smile more times than I can count. I just wanted to pinch her cheeks, hahaha—also, the enemy designs are dope. The Handyman stood out to me, and his dialogue puts him above the rest. This design is what people should strive for. Infinite isn't perfect; it has significant flaws.

My biggest problem with this game was that it was too easy. Anyone with decent skill in FPS will rip 50% of this game apart. I had to put this in hard, difficult to be challenged. This leads to another problem. This game doesn't use the enemies to their full potential, for example. For most of the game, they throw you regular foot soldiers with no backup or multiple heavy hitters. You can't do that; there's no way you'll lose. Add in vigor, and it's overkill.
Another example is sometimes they throw you one heavy hitter with no backup, and you have recently unlocked a vigor that decimates them. It's not fun; it feels like a waste of time. Now, this leads to another problem. Nobody balanced the vigors; they're ridiculously OP; buy a few upgrades for them, and these poor saps are fighting a god. It's not fun most of the time, but that's just me.

To end this. I loved this game, even with the flaws that it had. Suppose I could give this a score. I would score it an 8/10 or 9/10. But 8/10 is fair. So there you go.

I beat Luigis Mansion for the Gamecube more than a week ago. It is a good game with nice atmosphere. The graphics are still good. My favourite game of the series is part 3. They really improved a lot. Especially the gameplay variety. And the multiplayer is surprisingly fun. I do not think playing Luigis Mansion 2 will change my opinion, but I am still looking forward to it.

@Maxenmus I enjoyed Soul Hackers but I agree with everything you said. It seems 2 will be similarly mid tier SMT.

Overclocked isn’t though. How are you enjoying that?

Beat Xenoblade 3 a few days ago, I'll just copy and paste the same message I posted in other threads on my thoughts:

Just beat the game - the ending got me even more emotional than 2/torna did and I didn't even think that was possible.

I enjoyed the game through and through and it only got better as time went on.
I loved the combat and music of XC2 more and it had better worldbuilding (but for this part I'll give it a pass since that was one of the main themes of XC3) and the characters meanwhile XC3 has great characters, good combat in its own way and music.
It was really hard for me to decide what was the better game between XC2 and XC3, overall XC3 to me is a better game but I still have some bias towards XC2 it has higher peaks than XC3 but lower lows imo.

For the series I would rank the xenoblade games as:

XC3 ≥ XC2 > XC1

(haven't played XCX it doesn't exist)

Just beat the TMNT collection on Switch. Took me a week to go through the 13 titles therein.
The arcades, Hyperstone Heist and especially TMNT IV Turtles in Time were great. The NES titles were rather unforgiving, especially the second and third titles. The second GB title was an exercise in frustration.

I only beat the story modes in the fighting games, and as I'm not really a fighting game gamer, that suffices for me. It was tough to get the combos working, but I don't know what might be the issue, whether it's the emulation or my SN30 Pro controller.