Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

Except for that badge marathon level, which I assume is the last. I made it to the invisible portion a few times, but I was almost completely out of lives. Once my life counter hit 1, I decided to quit. I'll try again at some point as I was so damn close, but it was a gruelling few hours. Ugh.

I started with about 60 lives, but I've also gained a lot of lives during my numerous attempts, so I think I would have easily attempted the stage in excess of 100 times.

I finished Star Ocean 2 Remake with both Claude and Rena

I beat the Live a Live remake. It was...such an odd game that I'm not entirely how I feel about now that I've beaten it (especially since I clearly got a bad ending, might fix that later, I dunno). Lot of high points, some low points, looks amazing, thrilled this random Japan only game I found out 15 years ago on the internet I know own an official English version of. But I can at least give a ranking to the chapters.

Distant Future > Present Day > Wild West > Near Future > Edo Japan > ??? > Imperial China > Middle Ages > Prehistory

Distant Future is like a really cool RPG Maker game that would fit right in with To The Moon for narrative games but its also a part of an actual Square game from the Super Famicom, which rules.

Finally unlocked Gold Mario, but I had to use smart steering for some of those 200cc cups (I never use it otherwise).

I recently finished all the cases in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (first game) on Switch. I'll admit I wasn't too sold on the game with the first two cases - though I can forgive the first since it was a tutorial - but the later cases and overarching narrative more than made up for it. I'm a sucker for mysteries and whodunit type scenarios, so consider me a new series fan! A lot of the characters are pretty awesome too. I can now understand why Edgeworth has such a following. And the music...love it! The soundtrack definitely has that "Capcom" sound.

I will say the sheer length of Case 5 really threw me for a curve, moreso that it was after a credit roll. From what I could find, it appears this was a later case added as DLC before it was cool to the DS release? It played somewhat different from the rest and screamed "DS touch controls".

I've decided to give the Trilogy a short break, but I will resume my gradual playthrough with Justice For All soon.

After roughly 7 years I’ve finally gotten around to beating Mario Odyssey. Only the 3rd 3D Mario I’ve beaten(the other two being Sunshine and 3D Land)

I beat the first metal gear solid game tonight. My thoughts are kind of mixed honestly. I enjoyed it for the most part. Combat was a tad clunky which is expected for a PS1 game. Enemy placement where you can't see was definitely an annoyance throughout the game. My bigger issue was with the game being very cryptic in many spots. Solutions I wouldve honestly never guessed in a million years, Psycho Mantis fight for one. And some things you couldn't have even know if you didn't have an original PS1 MGS case. Other than that, story and characters were good. Stealth was fun for the most part. So yea, decent game. I'll check out the 2nd after I play a few games I've been waiting for.

Oxenfree

A four hour adventure game with a tinge of Eldritch horror. Puzzles are on the easy side, making this feel closer to a 2D walking simulator. But, it's well written and the voicework is great, which was enough to make me eager for each proceeding moment. Fantastic.

8/10

Monster Hunter Rise

Rolled credits for the base version at the 30-hour mark, we all know there's so much more to go.

9/10

Friday i beat Mortal Kombat 1 for my Nintendo Swith Lite

main story mode was pretty good but the final battle took way too damn long with Liu Kang doing his best trying to go up the pyramid only to be stopped every second by the bad guy versions of characters. Sheesh lol

Just beat Kirby's Epic Yarn after 4 days and 12+ hours of playtime!

apologies for the incoming text vomit XD

Epic Yarn has always been this white whale of sorts for me: I've desperately wanted to play it ever since I first laid eyes on it over a decade ago but have never been able to for one reason or another. Finally though, after all these years, I managed to grab a used copy at a local CEX a couple months back and patiently waited for the right time to fully throw myself into the woolen world ahead of me. Judging by my presence in this thread, it's safe to assume that time arrived at the start of this month. And the verdict? It's absolutely wonderful.

First things first, there's one aspect of Epic Yarn that you have to talk about before all else: it's aesthetic. Epic Yarn has one of the nicest and most well-realised visual styles of any game I've ever played, with pretty much every single aspect of both the character and world design adhering to the 'everything is fabric' concept in immensely charming and creative ways. Most characters are made up of a continuous string of wool molded to fit the design, environmetal effects such as water and lava are represented by a single dividing line of string, areas crease and morph when tugged on; I could genuinely keep going but I'll stop here. Put simply, Epic Yarn is an utterly beautiful game that has not aged a day in the looks department.

The gameplay is also a great time overall. Epic Yarn retains the general feel of a traditional Kirby platformer, but twists the fundamental mechanics around Kirby himself to provide an extremely rich toolset that's able to be used in a ton of different situations. Infinite jumps, inhaling enemies and gaining copy abilities are all tossed aside in favour of a constant moveset consisting primarily of a multi-purpose whip (in addition to some extra flourishes such as the descending glider instead of the multi-jump). Although this sounds like it'd lead to very static level design thanks to the absence of copy abilities, it ends up being the opposite funnily enough as almost every level puts Kirby's relatively limited moveset (at least compared to mainline Kirby) to the test in increasingly fun and interesting ways, helped out even moreso by the numerous transformation segments (the Dolphin is the best one btw).

One other extremely important part of Epic Yarn I want to highlight before I launch into the few negatives I have with it is the music; this is one of the best Nintendo soundtracks ever made. I know it feels like I say that for practically every Kirby game (Crystal Shards and Forgotten Land especially) but nonono: I can't properly convey just how incredible Epic Yarn's OST is in words alone. It does such an amazing job at enhancing the game's storybook/childlike feel and to list out my favourite songs would basically be just listing out the entire OST (though I do want to give special mention to Sweets Park, Big-Bean Vine and Green Greens).

With all this being said, there are bits of Epic Yarn that I wasn't the biggest fan of, chief among them being the challenges. While a fine idea in theory, having extra bonus levels themed around a unique gameplay goal, the execution isn't all too great. Some of them can be intensely annoying to go through (the Carrie challenges in particular) and the sheer QUANTITY of them (5 different goals with 20+ challenges in each = 100+ challenges total) is utterly draining for someone like me who likes to 100% Kirby games. Couple that with some finicky whip controls here and there (constantly aiming diagonally when I want it to be straight) and it's a frustrating blemish on an otherwise brilliant game.

Minor grievances aside though, I had a blast with Kirby's Epic Yarn. It's an infinitely inventive platformer with buckets of charm and memorability and a wonderful way to start the Christmas season off. 8.5/10

Shirone the Dragon Girl

A 3d puzzler escape room logic game. Graphics is nothing to write home about, the story is cute but a bit far between, but it has a nice flow. The puzzles are easy but not mundane.

Finished up Valkyrie Elysium yesterday. It's a bit brief by RPG standards (I finished it in just about 20 hours, & I believe even managed to get the best ending), but that wasn't a big deal because there's not much story to it (most world building & background lore is relegated to environmental pickups called Hollow Blossoms & Verdant Blossoms which give you notes about the state of the world, and the latter particularly are important for getting the best ending. Also, you learn most of the deeper aspects about your party members by completing each of their own side quest lines, though I don't think these effect ending outcome).

Combat is really quite fun & snappy (you can lock on & zip to enemies from quite a distance away), and there's a lot of different ways to get the edge on your enemies (each enemy type is weak to one of the ten or so different weapons you collect, and each also has one of 5 elemental weaknesses, which you can take advantage of with magic attacks. Also, each of your party members has an elemental affinity & summoning them to fight by your side will coat your weapon with their element & amp the effectiveness of your magic attacks of the same type), with bosses usually having different points you can attack & dismember from them. That said, at least on Normal I was able to get by easily enough just by taking advantage of element weaknesses (I usually only took the time to take weapon weakness into account as well during boss fights).

It has a few small issues, like the fact that it doesn't feel buttery smooth 100% of the time (this is a very mid budget cross gen title, so the PS5 shouldn't have any issue at all), but the drops weren't as noticable as they were in Star Ocean: the Divine Force (which I also really enjoyed, BTW), so not a big issue. Also, you can only have so many weapons, magic, items, etc. equipped to their various quick access slots, so in the latter parts of the game I often had to pause at the start of nearly every single combat encounter in order to reassign slots (usually magic, since there are only 4 quick access slots, but 5 element types + healing magic, the latter you'll want to have equipped to a slot at all times since use of healing items negatively affects your mission completion grade if that matters to you. Grades don't effect which endings you have access to though, so it's not a big deal if you don't grade well).

Also not really an issue, but I get the feeling that a 5th party member was planned but cut at some point. There are enemies that are weak to Darkness, and while you do have access to Dark magic to counter them, there is no Dark element party member you can team up with to get the boosts you can get with the other element types. Plus, none of the bosses are weak to Darkness, even though there are a few that aesthetically/thematically SHOULD be (they're usually weak to something random like Lightning, or even weirdly enough Light, which is thematically their own element).

Anyways I picked it up during the PS Store's Black Friday sale for $30 (it also came with a free copy of one of the older Valkyrie Profile games, which I'm not sure if I'll play), and am glad I gave it a go.

I really liked this game when I played it last year; simple, but kind of cute and charming . Nice to see someone else in the world has actually played it.

I finally checked off the last of the To-do list yesterday in Untitled Goose Game. I held off on the time challenges for a long time assuming that they'd be really tough/tedious, but they were quite a bit easier than I expected.

I saved the neighbouring houses for last assuming that it would be the most difficult, but I think I managed to complete it on my second attempt.

Maybe I just got really lucky.

The pub ended up being far more challenging as the "burly man's" behavioural patterns were a touch unpredictable, and I ran out of time on one of my attempts because I just couldn't manage to get the old fart to play darts in my remaining half-minute.

Yoshi’s Crafted world. Oh my god that game is so awful for completionist’s with all the padding thank to searching for trinkets (why can’t they just give the player a list BEFORE they enter the worlds?) the boss challenges that unlock once you beat the game are pretty fun though (except the first boss. that was a nightmare) and the extra world was honestly pretty fun to play. But the Kamek boss. Oh dear GOD that was one of the most frustrating bosses ever because of how awful go-go Yoshi controls because of the stupid input lag which is a shame since I fell like the kamek boss would be genuinely pretty fun if it weren’t for how clunky go-go Yoshi is. Honestly I’d give it a 7/10 mainly because going through the levels without getting the trinkets until the post game is honestly pretty fun.

@FishyS I always like it when someone mentions a game I thought only I knew about. Especially a hidden gem. It feels like bringing the players and sometimes the creators of games a bit closer together

Super Mario Bros. Wonder - I finally reached the credits a few days ago after 100%ing all the levels (outside of the Special World levels) beforehand. I'm now working through the Special World and only have a couple levels left. This game...wow. It's the freshest 2D Mario in well over a decade IMO, standing on par with my other 2D faves Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World. Fun, tight level design, cool new power-ups, colorful, pleasing locales (I hope the Flower Kingdom returns!), some fun badges to experiment with, plenty of characters to choose from (even if many are just palette swaps), standees are surprisingly fun to use, and the music is pretty fun too! Special shout-outs to the musical levels and what's perhaps one of my favorite main series Mario boss fights to date. Seriously, this game is just brimming with creativity. I played as Princess Daisy pretty much the whole time.

It's crazy how much I also enjoyed playing online! I'm normally a single player person outside the occasional online romp with friends or through local co-op. It's ridiculously fun to help other players out when you're going through the same levels, either by reviving them or by smartly placing a standee to 1. revive other players (if they touch it in advance) or 2. help indicate a secret or way to progress. My favorite involved quite a gauntlet between my Daisy and someone else's Mario in one of the special levels (Fluff-Puff Peaks Special - Climb to the Beat....If you know, you know). I think we were both at it a good hour.

This game is very easy to recommend for just about everyone, unless someone absolutely hates platformers. It can be as easy or as difficult as you make it. I very rarely go for 100% completion in games these days, but Super Mario Bros. Wonder has convinced me to try!

Rune Factory 3 for the Switch. I didn’t play the original despite owning it for a long time but I found the game very fun. I also finished it in like a week and that usually doesn’t happen 😅

I just beat Persona 5 Tactica. For the most part, i really loved this game. I thought the gameplay loop was addicting as most games in this genre usually are for me.

However, you are constantly bogged down with conversations that can sometime take up 60% of your gameplay sessions.

I get this is a persona spin-off, but more often than not, I'm sitting there reading text rather than playing on the maps. It left me skipping most of the dialogue throughout the 2nd half of the game. The first half of the story was great, I just got tired of waiting to jump into battle.

And since I felt as though the game was dragging on, the last 3 battles I just played on safe mode since I was ready for it to be Over. The rest of the game was played on normal which felt just right in terms of difficulty.

But, the last kingdom had you revisiting bosses that were sometimes a slog to get through. With that said, I was simply winded and just wanted the game to be done with.

I really liked it overall, and its still a recommendation for anyone who likes the genre. Just note there's a truck load of dialogue that can be tiresome..

I reached the end credits of Ys: The Oath In Felghana (PC/Steam) yesterday. A VERY fun ARPG, at least when it comes to gameplay. Fun and fast-paced combat with some decent abilities and items, much like Ys Origin (which came a year or two later IIRC), though the latter is understandably slightly more refined. Visually the game's overworld hasn't aged the best, but the illustrated portraits and scenes are almost peak Ys. Amazing music as usual from Falcom, and some very compelling characters. The plot is serviceable, but nothing that wasn't predictable until the last few hours, then the twists started happening. This game is known as a difficult Ys game, so unless one wants a hard challenge, I recommend starting with lower difficulties first (I played on Easy but probably would've been fine on Normal; I probably did a bit too much grinding before the final boss).

An easy recommendation for fans of challenging action RPGs and those who like chasing some crazy Steam achievements. This one is more for action fans than those wanting a deep story, though the plot does have a couple heartfelt moments if you know where to look. When it comes to Napishtim engine games however, I'd say Ys Origin takes the cake on everything.