Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

Skyrim

Wall-to-wall early 2010's jank. But the questing and character progression is still a good time.

Between playing through both Starfield and Skyrim recently, combined they make me worried for TES VI.

Mega Man 11 (Super Hero Mode)- Incredibly fun, and surprisingly not too difficult. I was doing all of the bosses without using any special weapons or double gear usages, and for the most part, they weren’t that bad- except Torch Man, Fuse Man and Blast Man, those guys put up quite the fight, and I barely managed to scrap them. This game is, imo, underrated. I know it’s generally quite liked, but it honestly deserves to be up there with the best Mega Man games (it’s one of my 3 favs, alongside MMX and MM9). One big thing that’s always been used against this game is the soundtrack, which isn’t the best. But there are some fantastic tunes, and for the most it really is pretty good (better than MM2’s, in fact). The stage selection and challenge themes are easily some of the best tracks in the franchise, and Fuse Man’s theme is one of the best stage themes as well. This game is polished to a near-spotless level, and it looks fantastic as well. It runs flawlessly, too, and the animation is great. To best put it, this is one of the highest quality 2D platformers out there.
Mega Man X8 - A good game, but definitely not for everyone. This was my first time beating the game without using a cheat code to get free upgrades. The story is actually kind of interesting, though also very confusing (it was definitely written without the various dialogue sequences and small amount of actual stage completion order in mind). Basically, these new Reploids are being produced to help create an orbital elevator that will take humans to the moon. But what makes these Reploids special? They contain an extraordinary ability that allows them to copy the appearance and DNA of other things. This ability gives them complete immunity to viruses, including the Sigma virus. So everything’s good, right? Well it was, until the New Generation Reploids began to revolt. Naturally, X and the gang aren’t convinced that the Sigma virus isn’t behind it all, but regardless, they still had to start trashing robots again. Luckily, X has grown out of his weird Ghandi phase from the last game and is now determined to put evil out of its misery. Zero and Axl are back as well, and they want in on the action as well. Throughout the game, the plot unfolds, until it’s finally revealed that the New Generation Reploids aren’t being controlled by the Sigma virus -instead, they have the Sigma’s DNA straight up pre-installed into them at birth, which means they can suddenly decide to become a Sigma. The game also tries to mess with the players heads, telling them that fighting is futile, as the world wishes for nothing but destruction anyways, which is kind of true. However, the three Busterteers aren’t ones to give up. They plow through the Maverick Sigmas and Quint/Vile, whose back because, well, because legends never die, unless your name is Legends. Eventually, they reach the Sigma man himself -our good friend Buzz Lightyear. Turns out he was doing all this in his quest to reach infinity and beyond. Of course, X and his friends have a quicker way of sending people to infinity and beyond. Long story short, Buzz dies (for good this time. Yep. Definitely. No way he’s coming back) and then some femboy named Lumine decides to be a prick and reveal that he had become a Sigma himself and had been plotting against humanity the whole time. You know what happens next. Lumine gets busted, but then some dark stuff from BOTW comes out of his body and bonks Axl on the head, rendering him unconscious for the rest of eternity because X9 is probably never going to happen. The game itself is good, but it is definitely not good the first time around. There’s so much crap everywhere, and the spikes mean business this time around. A lot of the levels also consist of slow auto-scrolling segments, which aren’t fun at all. Each level also has an annoying hazard mid-stage that you have to get through, and these range from mini-bosses to endurance tests. The game looks okay, and the soundtrack is pretty good, but it just isn’t my favorite X game. Now where does it go on my ranking? I don’t know. I know I don’t like it as much as the first game, but I can’t decide whether or not I like it more than 4 or 5. 4 is a fantastic game, but I completely suck at it, and the story and cutscenes are terrible. 5 isn’t anywhere near as good as 4, though I think I still prefer it for some reason, but I can’t decide whether or not 8 beats it. It’s still a good game, though.

I went back to playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe a few days ago, and I finally got 100% completion in Grand Prix mode.
3 stars in all 24 cups in the 200cc was what I needed, and I just got it (I hadn't even unlocked Gold Mario yet).

Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals TIme

A good sequel. Lots of lives / classes to grind and max. The Ginormous zones are another grind themselves. And the home base building stuff is yet another layer of distraction.

But other than the questing being mostly fetch-quests and checkboxes, there are no meaningful character interactions or side stories from the questing. Fun, but shallow. You could spend 100+ hours playing mini-games for the sake of gradual stat gains.

Question is, would that be fun for you? For me, there was no reason to stay once I finished the story.

8/10

Finally finished up the "real" five endings of Nier Automata. My thoughts are kind of all over the place on this game. I don't think it's the masterpiece so many people claim it to be, but it's really good.

I said it was my disappointment of the year a few years ago when I just got the A ending, not because of the story but because of the gameplay. I was really looking forward to an RPG by Platinum, but it's really not that different than Bayonetta. It's more hack-and-slash than RPG. Then I was worried that taking so long off between playthroughs I would forget what was going on. Well, I didn't have to worry about that, because the second playthrough is exactly the same as the first, just from a different perspective. Cue more disappointment. There was a little bit of gameplay difference with the addition of hacking, but that wasn't much and was incredibly easy.

Then the third playthrough was cool, but introduced some really annoying things, like when you get infected and can barely move but still have to travel a long distance. And it does this a couple more times later, too. Then when you take control of the third character, the first thing you do is go out in the desert and fight 3 Goliaths at once which took me a couple of tries, and then directly into the hardest fight in the game which I found fairly impossible until I managed to find a good "defense-only" pod setup and just slowly wore them down. And when you lose, you don't get to start at that battle but have to fight the 3 Goliaths again! At this point I reached the peak of my disappointment in the game, but fortunately once I finally managed to beat that boss it got a lot better.

The story did get really good if quite bleak (I can't believe what they did with Pascal!). Constantly switching between the two characters got a little disorienting, especially during that one boss battle near the end, but it wasn't too bad. And the strategy of choosing between normal fighting or hacking during battles was good.

So overall, I like the game. It definitely improved at the end. I did only manage to get one of the "joke" endings, though (I got ending G completely on accident, I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do, but apparently not). Fortunately, though, I already planned on being done and not bothering to do anything else, because if anyone is actually still playing this game, I will now help them out at the cost of my save file. Crazy ending, there, that is.

I finished Kaze and the Wild Masks on Switch last night (collected all the letters and all the green and purple crystals).
A great 2D platformer, very fun and with just the right level of difficulty.
Highly recommended.

@Xyphon22 For me Automata is fine, but Replicant is a genuine masterpiece of a game in comparison. However- I enjoy Replicant more because the story is driven by the characters rather than it being the characters reacting to events that happened.

@VoidofLight This is the only game in the series that I have played, so I don't know about Replicant or I guess Automata also has a lot of story connections to Drakengard that probably would have been good to be familiar with, too. I still thought it was a good game, but there was practically no way it was going to live up to the expectations I had going in based on what I had heard about it. I would consider it close between this and Wonderful 101 for my second favorite Platinum game behind Astral Chain.

@Xyphon22 Automata is a standalone game pretty much, but there are lore connections to both Replicant and Drakengard that enrich the experience if you played those first. Automata is pretty good, but imo it just feels overhyped. Sorta like how people overhyped Undertale- while Undertale was still a really great game.

Just rolled the credits of the best ending in Chronicles of the Wolf.

I am both pleased with the game and disappointed.

Pros:

• The environments are beautiful and charming.
• The game is long, which for a MetroidVania is a good thing for me.
• The exploration is really good.
• The music is really good.
• Again, has Robert Belgrade's voice in it

Cons:

• The combat system is the same from Lecarde Chronicles 2. Actually, the game is 90% similar with it. Ofc it is Mig's creation so that is understandable.
• The progression in the weapons path is laid out and you get the better weapon by just playing. Not many gear items are gated or rewarded in a unique way.
• The spikes in frustration varies per boss or enemy.
• No depth in equipment except for the pendants.
• With those progression faults there is very little replay value. You can't just play the game with a favorite weapon like in the Castlevania games.

Still, I bought 2 copies (Switch 1 and PS5) just to support this awesome indie game dev.

It Takes Two. I finally finished it and sadly its one that I am glad I am through with. This game was a disappoinent to be honest especially after A Way Out. I was expecting something like A Way Out and instead it was a cooperative platformer that honestly overstayed its welcome.

First of, I am not a big fan of 3D platformers and this game had everything that bugs me about them. The camera was God awful there was no way to lock on to enemies so tracking them was a pain in the ass. Why wasn't that a feature? Your are telling me that Ocarina of Time that was made 30 years can do it but a game made 2 years cant. Also the wonky camera makes platforming a pain leading to cheap deaths. Some of the levels where interesting I will give it that and I did enjoy a couple too but another night problem of this game is the cooperative game, both players need to be the same skill level or else you just cant do the objectives. Another thing that annoyed me was that the puzzles designs went the most roundabout way to solve them making the game a total slog.

The story was good at first just ended up being way to long. At one point it felt like the game should have been over but instead there was 4 more levels to go through. The levels just felt unnecessary. The characters were annoying. Of course they father they made the stereotypical ***** with no common sense while the mother was the brains of the family. The daughter Rose annoyed me the most. So her parents are getting a divorce so what? Sometimes its better for the parents to get one, but no they had to do the stereotypical oh its my fault they dont love each and I need to get them back together.

In conclusion this game is a huge let down especially after doing so well with A Way Out. Wonky cameras, cheap bosses boring level design and a dragged out story is not my idea of a fun game. One of my biggest disappointments of 2025. I am glad to be done with this game.

I'd give it a 3/10.

I finished the storyline of Street of Rage 4 PS4 by using Axel until halfway then I switched to Adam until the final boss.
I finished the game in approximately 2 hours.
That was really fast but I can replay again with different characters whenever I'm ready.

Sonic X Shadow Generations - Sonic Generations was good, Shadow Generations was just ok. Too bad Sonic Generations is so short; you just reach the final boss without warning. Shadow Generations just didn’t have much character, and it felt pretty boring at times, with a big problem being the seemingly never-ending levels. Neither of these games are worth a full retail price stand-alone, but together, they make for a pretty great package.

Breath of the Wild (NS2 Ed) - a masterpiece in game design. While it’s not my favorite, it’s still an amazing experience that should be experienced by anyone who loves adventure games. The music is great, the art is great, the characters are great, pretty much everything is great, although it’s pretty easy to waste time (mainly by side quests). The combat is fun, although I found myself getting one-shot a lot. The bosses can be pretty annoying, so it’s best u bring a lot of food and weapons in order to endure them and whittle their health bars down. Surprisingly, I managed to conquer most of the divine beasts without using guides (I used one to find out how to get to one of the terminals in Ruta, but that’s it). I definitely wouldn’t recommend skipping the divine beasts on ur first play through, as each one provides some pretty handy abilities (and by that I mean I only ever found use for Mipha and Revali’s abilities). But they also help against the final battle against Ganon, who is quite the challenge (be prepared to have a harder fight with ur horse than against the actual dude). Overall, this is a fantastic game that deserves the praise it gets, but I still prefer Mario Odyssey.

I finished Mario 3D World (except for the crown world), and I’m onto Bowser’s Fury now.

Kitten Lost her Box

Cute short little platformer with adorable bosses.

No Man's Sky
65 hours played. Platinum trophy for the base game. Still a top-5 space experience imo. Although the game could be played...forever, it's time to return to the backlog.

9/10

Split Fiction
12 hours played. The first game I've played from developer Hazelight Studios. A top-tier co-op experience. Top-notch mocap and voicework. Solid platforming and puzzle solving. Exceeding and lovingly referential to movies and video games. A GotY contender for good reason.

9/10

TMNT: Shredder's Revenge
2 hours played. The first game from developer Tribute Games I've played from start to finish. A high-quality ode to the TMNT beat'em ups of old. Some low level glitches forced me to go to the Switch dashboard and reload the game, but other than that nothing major.

8.5/10

Ys X: Nordics
40 hours played. Although I like the series very much, this entry feels like two steps forward and one step back. I did not enjoy it as much as either VIII or IX. But that's not to say it's a bad experience. It's still a solid action/rpg.

8.5/10

Been playing Super Mario Party Jamboree, and I've finished the following modes: Party Planner Trek, and Toad's Item Factory.

Party Planner Trek is basically this game's story mode. I didn't do every task, I did have to skip one of the minigames since it was giving me nothing but trouble. But I did do a good chunk of them. Not the most exciting mode since a lot of it is fetch quests, but I'm glad I finished it regardless.

Toad's Item Factory is a fun side mode overall, it's the one where you'd guide the ball to the goal by moving the red and blue stage elements with the joy-cons. Some of the stages had me move the joy-cons in awkward ways though, lol. One of the last stages especially gave me trouble, but I persevered.

Red Dead Redemption (Switch). This game was awesome. It was another one of those games I missed out back in the gap. Because of the Switch I've been able to get that second chance at game(s) like this. I played it honorably and didn't go on mass murder spree's, etc. although I totally get the appeal in doing that. I have no interest in 100% all the little things you can do in the game, but I did at least do all side quests. The storytelling in this game is something we just don't get anymore. So good, so engrossing and what a surprise ending to it all. Did not expect it.

I also did the DLC Undead Nightmare. I wasn't expecting much from it, but I'll admit it took me by surprise how fun that was. Same as the main campaign I have no interest in 100% all the little things but I did do all the side quests.

I've had this one in the backlog since it was announced/released on Switch, so it feels so good to finally polish it off.

Beat FFIV again and I really forgot how short this game was. The running option for the PR helps, but even then I beat the game around 16 Hours. Still love it and a top 5 FF

Just beat Planet of Lana. Took about 6 hours. Very pretty game with an interesting combination of super relaxing and occasional mild jump scares. I rate it 8/10. Most of the puzzles were good though a few were repetitious and one was very odd theme-wise for this type of puzzle platformer. The controls weren't bad but could have been better for the lesser used ones. Otherwise very fun. And both the beginning and ending were good. I played on Switch 2 (no idea if it would be different on Switch 1).