Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

Beat super ghouls and ghosts legitimately without save states(had to use rewind due to input delay). But it was the ending without goddess bracelet.

Beat Yonder The Cloud Catcher Chronicles and Pilotwings 64. Yonder could be a really cool game, but sadly the story, dialogue and gameplay are lacking. The sidequests were boring and crafting and trading stuff was not very fun. Only the visuals and atmosphere are nice.

Pilotwings 64 is weird in a good way and has a very relaxing tone. It is one of the games that define the N64 feeling for me. Congratulations to everyone who manages to get gold in every class. This is one of my last NSO games since my subscription is running out.

Sly Racoon for the PlayStation 2 is 100% finished. It was a fun ride all the way to the end. Those developer commentaries for doing the time trials are nice. The next entries should be fun too.

I just beat Pokemon Snap in one sitting. This is my favourite Pokemon game.

(@Fizza have you beaten it yet?)

Castlevania Lords of Shadows: Mirror of Fate. Quite the pleasant surprise.

I beat Super Mario Land yesterday. It's still a lovely little game, short length and all.

Steamworld Dig 2. It's pretty cool how it connects not just to the original Dig, but also to Heist. It also definitely sets up a Dig 3 at some point. Now I just need to get Quest next time it's on a good sale.

After the DS trilogy, Bloodborne is also defeated!!!

@Zuljaras Another "Souls" (I know this is not a good name to label all games that are similar to Dark Souls but it's easy to remember) game down, what's next for the Great Hunter?

Hell yeah. Bloodborne is a modern classic if there ever was one.

@Kermit1 I am thinking of ordering Elden Ring because it will probably be the best of them all!

@Zuljaras I'd say get it, if you enjoyed those you might love Elden Ring.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Switch) - Finally watched the credits roll after nearly 150 hours (about 3 months of playing nothing else but this). Great game, I have some minor issues with it (I wish it would tell you when there are new quest related convos available in a colony that way I didn't have to run through them multiple times, and I would have liked more outfit customization, the DLC swimsuits are nice but too late), but otherwise a very engaging experience. Definitely feeling a bit of that "content" bloat though (not sure I want to pour that much time into a game again, lol).

TOEM (Steam) - A nice, briskly paced experience after XC3. A very chill, "photo adventure" game. Think I have a handful of optional objectives left, but I'm satisfied with what I've done (main story + free DLC world).

Astro's Playroom (PS5) - Another briskly paced adventure that I worked through now that I got a PS5. Absolutely brilliant little platformer that stands right alongside Odyssey & Forgotten Land IMO. Really felt like a celebration of PlayStation history (gave off a vibe I only thought Nintendo would be able to pull off until now), and the company would be fools if they don't have a larger Astro adventure in development. The final boss in particular was fantabulous.

100 percent on Kirby's Forgotten Land! I am proud, I am normally very put off by big games which have that optional 100 percent to beat. Find them a bit overwhelming, and if I get into them, then I have to get the 100 percent, otherwise it is pointless to stop a bit before.

Final obstacle for me was the HARD level on Tilt and Tumble Kirby. Many many many many tries to do it!

Return to Monkey Island - beat the game this weekend after approx 11-12 hours of play.

I’d ultimately recommend to anyone that enjoys the genre, or has familiarity with the older games in the series (and presumably had fun playing these games).

A fun romp and a nice change of pace from more action-orientated games, nice to actually use my brain for once… and fortunately most of the puzzles are solved through cerebral rationalities - instead of obtuse/random solutions.

My only critique would be it’s a little on the easy side… and only really ‘hits its stride’ in Act IV (total of 5 acts in the game).

Act IV has a lot of moving parts, location variety, and ramps up the challenge…. And it is a real shame that all the acts don’t follow this blueprint!

I set out to avoid using the in-game hint system …. But let myself down and had to utilise the hint book for the very last puzzle in Act V (in fairness I was totally barking up the wrong tree in my solution/tactics… probably would have had me stuck for a few days!)

Overall I’d give it a solid 7/10, and maybe 8/10 if you are a huge fan of the genre.

Today I beat Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles for the GameCube. This playthrough showed me that I really love this game and it will be remembered dearly. Surely this is not my last playthrough.

Crimson Shroud (3DS) - Definitely a unique RPG/pseudo visual novel, part of Level-5's 3DS Guild releases and designed by Yasumi Matsuno (Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy Tactics). This one has decent worldbuilding and characterization, and the presentation is visually decent for an early 3DS game. The action is presented with each of the characters as minifigures in their environments; not too unlike a tabletop RPG. There's no experience or leveling; all your stats are controlled by equipping gear that you obtain as you play, either from chests or via combat. Melding two or more of the exact same items (or adding a spell scroll to an item) is often key to help progress; this is often better than just equipping items. Some attacks, buffs, debuffs, actions, etc. are determined by rolling various dice; while reminiscent of TTRPGs like D&D, this isn't quite the case.

Overall, this game is worth looking into if one likes tabletop RPGs, decent yet compact lore, likes grinding (You will grind, especially from what I'm reading about New Game+), and knows what they're getting into. I highly recommend watching some videos and reading some impressions/reviews out there to determine if this is for you. I generally liked the game, but some of its gameplay, not to mention a bit where you have to grind for a random drop, put me off of trying NG+ (Where the true ending can be found....) for now.

I finally beat Neo: The World Ends With You. I know its a JRPG but even with that in mind, wow is a lot of this game's story in the third act.

Ok, having finally beaten it, while I did really enjoy it from the start, I would've said for the first half of the game (which because of how this game does sidequests (in that it does them before post-game, unlike the original)), is significantly longer with less reason to care. Not that I didn't care, but it was failing to grab onto much of what made the original's story work in the same way. But slowly it started to come into focus and it felt like it got back on track with probably a much stronger climax than that original game (in that it is also much longer, but the pacing isn't ruined by that). One of the things I really love about TWEWY is how it does fairly standard adolescent anime coming of age storytelling way better than most. And while this game lacks the clever use of DS gameplay to add to that experience, it focuses even harder on getting you invested with the actual story (eventually), with JUST enough nostalgic fondness for the first game to be endearing but usually not so much that it gets in the way of the new characters (one of them might be my favorite in the series).

And the story is what put it over the top for me. At first I was still enjoying it a lot, these games are quality action RPGs that are a joy to play. But for the first half of the game I would've said it was a bit disappointing, and that combined with being less novel as well (both as a sequel and lacking the cool DS integration), it would've been just that. But now I think its dangerously close to being as good as the original. And having the entire big finale of your big story driven game being so strong and emotionally effective does improve my opinion of the story in particular (see also: the 2nd Xenoblade and Professor Layton games).

In particular, this also modernized it in ways that felt genuine that I appreciated a lot, in particular in what it has to say about both being friends with and idolizing people you know online. And of course, it has the absolute best character designs like the original. I don't pay attention to Nomura's existence or what he has or hasn't done in modern Square Enix too much, but his work in these games is remarkable. Most of the reason to ever watch the rushed, underwhelming anime adaptation of the original game is simply to see these character designs in an actual anime. And the music is a similar level of top tier, even if it really over-relied on slight updates of older songs.

Recently beat Pokemon Fire Red for the first time. Couldn't really afford to ask for it as a kid, since there wasn't tons of money to go around and I did already have Ruby. I enjoyed it a lot though. Retro Pokemon is always great.

Working on Fire Emblem Blazing Blade as my next completion.

@kkslider5552000 I liked NEO a lot. I was worried because Squeenix had almost no marketing for it, so I was worried it would be a careless cashgrab. I think my biggest issue with the plot was how all the TWEWY characters come back and are like "yeah we had an epic adventure after the first game but you can't see it, we're just gonna talk about it, trust us though it was awesome!"

Here's hoping for a TW3WY