Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

@wollywoo
Congratulations on beating Mario Wonder and Final Fantasy VII! The bonus level in Wonder is challenging. I hope you will succeed, should you decide to try again.

Yeah, the invisibility badge is pure-troll. And that last section is set up in such a way that it is basically automatic if you do it a certain way but if you don't play the exact arbitrary way Nintendo expects you to, it is basically random... and having that section be after 3 long slightly tedious sections without a checkpoint just makes it worse. I did beat it, but it's bad game design in my opinion. Granted, the majority of Wonder is excellent game design and that level is optional, so it is mostly forgiveable.... unless they bring the invisible badge to mario maker 3 in which case whoever invented that badge should be punished.

I hadn't bought it for myself as I already had one, but I was lucky enough to stumble across a Pikmin amiibo, and I knew my brother wanted it, so I snatched it up (he doesn't collect amiibo, but there was a handful that he wanted).

@FishyS Hmm, now I'm curious to know what the "automatic" way is... but on the other hand, I've moved on and given up on this and I don't know if I have the patience to go through all the ten or however many other stages again...

In other news, I just beat Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Wow, great game! It was so fun all the way through. Very challenging but generally not frustrating, although it has the usual Metroidvania frustration of "there's one path somewhere in this giant world where I can progress, but where is it" and "huh, I'll skip this part because I don't have the right powerup yet... (an hour later) oops, I guess I can actually do it."

The controls feel really good and the boss fights are magnificent and ridiculously over-the-top (very anime.) The teleportation power in particular feels amazing to pull off, especially if you can use it cleverly in combat. The music is also great (apparently they got some Iranian composers to get an authentic Persian feel.)

Speaking of Persian feel - the game makes interesting use of Persian mythology, and occasionally real historical figures like King Darius. It's not going to be used in schools anytime soon, but it's neat to see the connections. It lends a certain weight to things that you wouldn't get from a totally-made-up world. I wish more games would use material from mythology beyond Greek and Norse gods. I wonder what modern-day Zoroastrians would make of the religious references to Ahura Mazda, Athra, Angra Mainyu and so on.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe + Booster Courses
I love to play through this game from time to time. Now I can play a little more courses.

Super Mario Odyssey
My fourth or even fifth playthrough. It is a fun game after all and a minimalist run, does not take much time at all.

FF6. I Have to say, I enjoyed IV much more, and 7 and 9 are still tied for first for me. VI was absolutely great up until the World of Ruin. Then I heavily relied on a guide, boosted my exp to x4, along with my magic points to learn spells faster. It was far to open ended, and way too many miss-able items and characters. Combat was ok, and I liked the characters enough, but seriously; halfway through I was ready for the game to end. The one thing I'll say that never got old was Kefkas laugh. It even made me start to chuckle. All and all, I'm glad I got it off my gaming bucket list, but it's low on the FF totem pole for me. I'll eventually play V at some point, especially when it hits a sale.

@NintendoByNature Kefka is one of my all time favorite video game villains. And that final battle against him so epic.

Yoshi's Crafted World
Another playthrough of this awesome game. Every level looks different and has something new in store. 100% is a challenge. The horror clowns level is a little too much horror though for a Yoshi game.

The Legend Of Zelda Tears Of The Kingdom
Wanted to see the secret ending today and did so. Still loving the ending. The bossfight is extremely cool. And saving Zelda and seeing her happy and relieved almost makes me cry with happiness. Dear Ganondorf, a true king is someone, who strives for everlasting peace. Watching the secret ending was worth it.

I decided to give Xenoblade Chronicles 3 another chance. Seems like I overreacted a bit, when I dropped it. The next time you see me ranting again, about a game being too dark and stuff, please feel free to tell me, to take a break and come back later to the game, when I feel more like it. Only if you want to, of course.

@Tasuki yea he's definitely up there. That fight takes alot outta you. That's for sure.

Unicorn Overlord and River City Saga Three Kingdoms.

Princess Peach Showtime!
100% finished. Propably the most relaxing 100%, I ever accomplished. Did not even have to use the internet. But I do not mind it, since I expected a relaxing experience and since I do not think, all games have to be challenging.

Furthermore, I did not feel, like the game was explicitly targeted at girls. Felt like the good Nintendo, Disney and even Kingdom Hearts stuff.

This is simply a game to feel good vibes and to be entertained. I had a great time.

I like how the music player does not have every track on repeat, but has a repeat option. Makes it easy to listen
through all the tracks. The music is good and atmospheric.

We should have a poll, which costume is the favourite. To be honest, I am not so sure yet, since they are all lovely.

Edit: I will try now to get at least one Princess Peach Showtime! themed spirit, in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

I haven't seen them all yet, but the cow-spotted version of her normal pink dress is up there in pure adorableness.

Definitely a relaxing game but also with some challenge. In terms of finding collectables, it was definitely harder than e.g. Mario Wonder. Granted Wonder was also super relaxed to 100% except for the last special world level.

@FishyS
I will check out the cow dress later.

Uff, yeah the last level in Super Mario Wonder is hard. But I love the last badge you get, for completing it. A playthrough with that badge would be so much fun.

Taking a break from Unicorn Overlord, been on a bit of a shmup bender.

Vostok Inc
I'm usually not much for cookie-clickers. But this particular blend of Asteroid-clone with a cookie-clicker lite aspect...hey, it speaks to me. First played it years ago, got 80%-ish through it. Set it aside, forgot the gameplay loop. Started a fresh run, somehow landed on 60 hours played (WTH?) and I'm not necessarily mad about it.

7/10 - The very definition of "make number go up" because it's the core of the gameplay loop.

Deathsmiles
Not my favorite Cave experience (Dangun Feveron and Guwange share that title for me), but this bullet hell doesn't disappoint. Until you reach that final boss. Straight cheeseball bull****tery from that final boss, my friends. Basically burn your bombs in quick succession or perish.

8/10 - A solid horizontal shmup from the house of shmup royalty.

I beat Persona 3 Reload a few days ago. In my eyes, it's truly the best out of the main three Persona games. The story is actually well written, and the characters don't fall too hard into the anime tropes that Persona 4 and 5 tend to fall into. The main characters all actually get development during the plot instead of their arcs being sidelined into social links as well. Tartarus was refined heavily- to the point where it feels like they actually put a ton of care into it this time around. All the blocks feel more unique- and on top of that, they mix up the floors with different features that weren't in the base game at all.

The ending is one I can't stop thinking about. Only gripe I think I had with the game was the OST- with it feeling far weaker than the original in many different aspects.

Just got to the credits in Peach Showtime after 100%-ing the main game. It's been a long time since a game made me that happy. Easy 9/10 from me.

Took around 15 hours I think (My silly Switch of course just says 'first played 9 days ago'). There is actually a surprisingly large amount of post-game stuff, but I'll probably save that for a revisit to the game.

Bit of a retro kick at the moment...

Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (Game Gear via Analogue Pocket). Took me a while to actually finish this as I'd got distracted playing other stuff. Decent and fun platformer, but took me a while to get used to having that extra button press when you jump on enemies. My muscle memory was jumping straight on them like Mario to defeat them, but it's more like Ducktales where you have to press again to actually bounce on them. Not sure if it's just me getting old, or being spoiled by respawning/save points like in some modern platformers, but I found this pretty difficult and ended up making generous use of the Analogue Pocket's save states. Guess my reactions are not what they used to be.

Smash TV (Midway Arcade Origins on 360 via Series X). Used to love this game back in the day and it's aged pretty well too and still a blast to play. Not sure if it's similar to above where I'm basically getting old/slow, but this is brutally difficult and had to just credit-feed to get through it. Even dropping the difficulty down to the lowest setting I was still dying constantly. Still so much fun though.

@dmcc0
I am also often surprised how difficult the games, I beat as a young kid are. I think we simply forget most of the struggle we had and just remember the good times.

I finally beat Metroid Prime: Federation Force. Me and Dogorilla ended up playing through it, largely because I can't imagine finding many people to play it IRL. So having finally played it, it is exactly as ok as I thought it would be.

Like it does risk actively being a good game instead of being a decent enough distraction for what it is, but it has two things that are annoying to specifically me. 3DS action-heavy games, which hurt my hands after a while (especially with the weird manual aiming lock-on...thing, bring back the stylus controls of Hunters instead). And games where you spend ages on a level and just die at the end and have to redo all of the not challenging parts. But even without that, this still wouldn't be my favorite idea in concept and the execution would still be below the high standards of the series. But its fine enough, I think it has a decent idea of how to make a fun co-op game. I wouldn't want a sequel over a new Metroid Prime Hunters (let alone mainline games), but if they did one I could see it being pretty fun by the usual assumption they would improve upon the first one.

It just feels like its from a specific, not great time for Nintendo. It even has a huge, obvious problem where if a player loses all their health after reviving someone, the game will still call it a mission failure even if the other player is back in action that I assume would've been fixed if this game was liked or if Nintendo had any interest in it beyond getting it out the door.

One thing I liked about Federation Force is it doesn't really repeat level objectives; most missions have their own distinct central mechanic, even if it does also throw in quite a few 'clear out this room of standard enemies' segments. But yeah, the levels can get quite long and there are no checkpoints, so it's pretty frustrating at times.

I do like it though, personally I'd even go so far as to say it's an actively good game in spite of its flaws. I'm glad I got to play through it in co-op before the servers die (which I haven't managed to do for Tri Force Heroes, don't know when I'll get a chance to play that game properly...) as it would probably be much more frustrating solo.