Dec 20, 2017 6:23:14 GMT surrender said:

If anyone wants to play Street Fighter V, my username is Sasha_Banks

I’ll add you, mine is FergusFerguson

I made the same mistake of leaving Shadow for dead during my first playthrough of FFVI years ago. Then again, I didn't even really use Shadow that much even in subsequent playthroughs. I was too fixed with my main team Terra, Celes, Locke, and Mog; with the Figaro brothers as back-up.

Currently going through Lost Odyssey in the X360. I wish this game had a Steam release so I can continue to play it when I travel back to NZ next month. I kinda miss the slow turn-based games and the notably system battle and ability system, though the fact that the random encounters are slow due to the challenge and animations is a bit jarring. But the graphics are still quite good and hold up to this day.

If there's a real underrated gem in 2017, I have to say Knack 2 would be it for me this year. I get the frustration Knack 1 represented because it was a game that did so many things both right and wrong but I feel like Knack 2 took what Knack 1 offered to the table and did it 10x better. The only two drawbacks in fact with Knack 2 is the story/writing is extremely clique and the frustration of not knowing where a cutoff point is when exploring for hidden items/crates before triggering a mandatory cutscene that often takes you to a new chapter and thus blockades you from going back. The combat has gotten much better with Knack having far more moves up his arsenal, the music is very sound and appropriate for each scene/portion of the game, and there's a good enough length on the game(13 hours for me) to make it a worthwhile purchase at 40 bucks or less, though it does drag at given points later on. I really enjoyed my time with it and I am glad Mark Cerny had a shot at redemption given Knack 1 was a launch title for the PS4 and was more reveled for its graphics to the common person more than anything else. I would totally be down for a 3rd installment of this series although IDK if this game sold well enough to warrant it. I hate scoring games but this is a solid 8.75 for me, one of the best platformers of the year for me and that's saying something with a Crash Remastered, Sonic Mania etc. releasing this year in what has easily been a revival of platformers for the year in 2017.

Finished A Hat in Time. Really great game, so I'll probably see if I can 100% it before tackling the last chapter in Before the Storm.

Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny
After completing the first Onimusha game, I said it was a game with above average combat, but not much else to offer. Although the game felt rushed/incomplete, the core gameplay was solid enough to get a few hours of enjoyment out of it. The sequel improves on the original in every way. Let's start with the combat. Onimusha: Warlords had three weapons, but you could only do the "mash square" combo attack, magic attacks, and a couple of other simple attacks using the lock on/strafe button. Samurai's Destiny offers the player a lot more scope for combat. There are four weapons with varying attack patterns. As well as the basic combo, you have three sets of charge attack, and a special combo which can only be used if you find the scroll for that weapon. This makes battle a lot more fun because of the array of options and the decision making involved. The sequel also retains the OHKO mechanic of the previous game: press the block or attack button just before an enemy attack strikes and you critical hit them, earning an insta-kill and more souls (exp) than usual. This is my favourite aspect of the combat. It requires skill to pull off, but it's not impossible, and the rewards are well worth the effort. The trouble is, if you mistime it, you're going to get hit, so you can't try it forever.

The voice acting and story still comes across as a little bush league, but nowhere near to the laughable efforts of the original. Some of the voice acting is actually pretty good, but the dialogue is quite shallow. The additional of several playable characters adds some depth to the game. Each of these characters has their own mini story and sidequest, unlockable by becoming friends with them through an item-giving minigame. The problem is, it's impossible to unlock all of these in one playthrough. As a completionist, I find this to be a cheap way of forcing a replay (compare it to Persona's social links, which are possible, albeit extremely difficult, to 100% in one game). On the other hand, each playthrough is never quite the same as the previous one, so when the player does return to it after a period of absence (as I do with this game), there's a novelty to the experience. This playthrough I focused on Kotaro the ninja, and thus saw a bunch of cutscenes I had never seen before. Previously I had only accessed Ekei's stories, for he is the default character if you treat everyone equally.

The game recycles the environments of the previous game, albeit in an organic way. It also offers a lot of fresh new areas, and a bunch of awesome boss battles. Most of the boss battles are super fun and endlessly replayable. The only drawback is the final boss, which is an exercise in tedium and forced special-ness. The final phase of this battle is a bizarre sort of shoot 'em up autoscroller. Obviously the intent is to make the final act seem special, but I never like it when the core gameplay is thrown away in this way. For a new player, completion time is 6-8 hours, which is a good length for a hack 'n' slasher. In fact, this game is so much fun, I'm going to replay it on hard modee with the aim of unlocking Magoichi's storylines.

Finally started in on the Evil Within 2, it's still fun, but I think I preferred the linear form of the original to the open map of the second. Though the gameplay is still a bit clunky.

Nioh - I really wanted to get Bloodbourne GotY edition around Christmas but it wasn't available so I had to make do with my old Nioh save. As it turns out, there's still a ton of game left so I've been having a blast going back, finding all the hidden hot springs and collecting all the Kodamas. I've now entered the NG+ where all the enemies have been scaled up and certain areas have more dangerous enemies. As such, the game really challenges you to master the system so I've been working on getting the right gear, upgrading the guardian spirits and getting the right build for my character. When I beat the game, my character was basically 20 in each category except for Dextirity. Since I mostly use Swords, I've concentrated more on Heart and Skill and have found the game a lot more manageable.

I want to platnium the game, but I'm finding certain trophies difficult. Namely the side missions which are basically end game boss rushes. I've been returning to them every now and then but I just don't have the skill level yet to beat them. Once I get more accustomed with the system, I'll mop the floor with them and taunt over their lifeless bodies.

Yu-Gi-Oh: Forbidden Memories - So that toys that made us inspired me to check out some of the toys I was into when I was younger...which meant another revisit to Yu-Gi-Oh. The series has such a bizarre history. It debuted in a Weekly Comic Book series in mid-96 as a comic that had more in common with the Saw series than Magic the Gathering. Then in September of '97, they introduce Seto Kaiba, the legendary Magic and Wizards card game player. Of all of Yugi's adversaries, it's Kaiba who the fans get behind and the one story arc ends up becoming the focus for the rest of the manga. In haste a bunch of companies trip over themselves trying to get the rights to the card game. Bandai lands it first and releases a game that's nothing like it's depicted in the manga. Instead of draining your opponents life points, you destroy all their cards and have to count the amount of star points you've accumulated in the battle. Meanwhile Konami managed to get their hands on the video game licenses and had two games in the works. The first was based on the table top game from the manga which had elements of Pokemon. The other was their own version of the card game which was very similar to the manga's except certain aspects were elongated. Konami were very coy with their releases and not only did they make their own version of YuGiOh, they also released a bunch of promotional cards with both games which would end up being the template for the card game moving forward.

By January of 99 Konami had the rights to the card game and went onto release 12 booster series (or 635 cards) before the release of Forbidden Memories in December of '99. Not only did Forbidden Memories include all those cards, they also previewed a bunch of cards that would appear in the upcoming sets. In that way, the games provided avid collectors an incentive to buy the game.

Not only was Forbidden Memories a sign of things to come for players, it was also a game designed to showcase some Sony PlayStation hardware. In response to Sega's VMU, Sony released the Pocketstation, a device that would provide each game with additional content. In the case of Forbidden Memories, the Pocketstation was the only way to access some of the best cards the game had to offer and the campaign was designed with it in mind.

Fast forward to 2002 and Yu-Gi-Oh hits the United States in March of 02. Right as the second booster series, Metal Raiders hits, the Sony PlayStation game Forbidden Memories arrives to our shores. All the little jimmys across the US come to the realisation that Forbidden Memories is one of the toughest games on the PlayStation. Y'see, the Pocketstation never came out here, so around 50 of the best cards were unavailable through legitimate means. If players wanted to win, they had to grind and hope that the RNG gods were kind so they could get the right cards that would give them a chance against the final boss rush. Not only did you go into these matches understrength, you had to complete all six fights consecutively, one loss and you'd have to start all over again.

The game is also interesting in that it came out before the manga ended, so they had to come up with their own ending and unique set of characters. As it turns out, none of the storylines they introduced featured in the series itself. Given how the show turned out, it's something of a shame.

The Yugioh video games were interesting in that a lot of them weren't true to the official card game. For instance in Forbidden Memories aspects like deck layout, fusions, bonus' and the amount of cards that can be played are different to the card game. A lot of games had their own unique playstyles and it wouldn't be until the third Game Boy Colour game that Konami would make a game that was true to the spirit of the card game.

Finally, American players would have been confused by some of the cards present in the game. In Forbidden Memories, there's 722 cards, but quite a few of them never made their way over from Japan. In their haste to release as many cards as possible, Konami flooded the market with a lot of useless cards that were scrapped and a lot of cards that were introduced in the volumes and booster series were lost when Konami brought in the Legend of Blue Eyes sets.

As a final note, by the time Forbidden Memories made it's way stateside, the OCG was up to Advent of Union. Since Upper Deck (the company in charge of the TCG) combined sets, that would make it apart of the Magician Force series, which was six booster series away or in terms of time, 14 months away. By the time Magician's Force came out, the game was getting ready for huge meta changes with a lot of the best cards either being banned or limited.

Playing Demons Souls for the 1st time just in time to beat out the late Feb 2018 server closing. More than halfway through,I really am enjoying the game. Only complaint(s) would be the item burn which I got used to in Bloodborne granted and being forced to drop off items due to item burden which is atrocious. Everything else has been grand and has been just as good as any Souls game I have experienced. I've died quite a bit but half of the bosses I have 1 or 2 shotted which IDK if its because I have gotten better at these types of games or what but I am impressed with my ability to hang with some of these bosses.

Ever since the announcement of Soulcalibur VI, I've been playing a lot of Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny. I really miss this set of characters, so I'm looking forward to VI coming out this year. I'm really crossing my fingers that Setsuka will be playable or at least DLC. She has one of the most fabulous iai-based movesets I've ever seen.

Finished the Evil Within 2. I will say I much preferred the linear nature of the first game, as it was more apt to a horror environment, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the second, and appreciate that we got a proper final boss this time round. First game I saved up all the good ammo just to end with the RE style boss on rails with pre-determined weapon, so I'm glad I didn't figure on another and waste all the good stuff, even on just normal difficulty it took a good deal of my best ammo. Though it seems it's joining Mankind Divided, and New Colossus in the games I enjoyed with disappointing sales leading to an uncertain future department. Though at least unlike the other two the story was somewhat conclusive (though did have a sort of cliff hanger). Definitely revisit it in the future.

My problem with the first game was that it was a buggy mess, with terrible framerate. The fact that you had to burn some enemies in the first game in order to confirm they are dead was also annoying, where as with 2, they did away with that. The thing that killed it for me completely was the shit letterboxing that was on the and the bottom making item hard to see at times. A patch WAY down the road would take it out, but by that point it was way too late. The second game pokes fun at it by calling it classic mode. They knew it was bad.

Plus I prefer Stefano over Ruvik (even though it didn't matter for Stefano down the road)...but still he is as close of a Jojo that you can get.

I actually dislike them dropping the fire mechanic, that was a great way to clear enemies in the first, take one down, time it just right, light 'em right when another enemies walks over them. I didn't think it was too tough to gauge when they were dead. In this one, not only did away with the matches, but fire didn't kill even the weakest of enemies.

I played it late in the cycle, so I didn't really notice many bugs or anything, don't remember if it was letter boxed or not.

Apologies for the belated like Emp, I only just read your review for Onimusha 2. It's a game I've had in my collection for over 13 years and I've yet to play past the tutorial since I bought too many games. However, as a fan of Capcom games I really want to dive into the series and I'm looking at options for expanding my PS2 collection (the legitimate way...or the efficient way). The game does sound like classic Capcom and apologies if you've answered this before, but how many PS2 Capcom games have you played?

Splatoon 2 - The latest Splatfest was last night pitting Action against Comedy. This was a tough choice, but since I take Splatoon seriously (deadly serious) I went with Action. Unfortunately my internet connection kept cutting out, so whenever I'd get on a roll, my net would disconnect, I'd get a worse rank and find myself with a bunch of beginners who didn't know the game as well as others. It turned what could have been a relatively breezy playthrough into a chore as I probably had 10 disconnects in total.

YuGiOh Forbidden Memories - I've been farming Isis, Meadow Mage and Jono2 for the sake of getting better cards. I've probably had 300 battles and so far I've only added about 10 new cards to the deck. The plan at the moment is to farm Meadow Mage for some Black Meteor Dragons (35000 ATK) and some Meteor Dragons (can be fused for BMD). Then farm Jono2 for Red Eyes Black Dragon (fusion material for BMD) before focusing on Pegasus so I can get more equips and traps.I hope in a week's time I've made some progress towards that goal and by the end of January have the game finished once and for all.

Jan 13, 2018 11:46:36 GMT Big Pete said:

How many PS2 Capcom games have you played?

Devil May Cry 1-3 - Don't remember 1 very well. 2 is OK, not as awful as everyone makes it out to be. 3 is great.
Haunting Ground - Survival horror with the gimmick that the heroine has a dog that can be controlled with the right analog stick. Couldn't get into it at all. Very bland game, basically a really bad Resident Evil with no combat.
Onimusha 1-4 - All good-great games. 2 is the peak.
Resident Evil 4 - Great.
Shadow of Rome - Had no idea Capcom did this until I looked it up. A hidden gem. Would have been a lot better without the half-assed stealth levels.

I started a new game on Onimusha 2 and quickly got bored. As much as I love the game, I don't love it so much I can bash out two games in a row. If it were a longer game, maybe. Instead I started Genji, another samurai hack'n'slasher. Graphically it's a lot better than Onimusha. The movement and combat is much more varied and fluid. The plot is pretty basic, but it's an incredibly fun game with some fantastic boss fights. God of War fans ought to love this game.

I really did enjoy that era from Capcom and yet there are so many of their games I've yet to play. I never played the original DMC trilogy, Shadow of Rome nor the Onimusha series. On the flipside I did play the Maximo games (solid 7s, I liked the spiritual Ghost n Goblins successor thing it had going), Killer 7, God Hand and Viewtiful Joe. I'd recommend the latter three and would really like to get your impression of Killer 7 at some point.

Outside of those aforementioned games (and Haunting Ground, but that maybe too spooky for me) I'm keen to check out Chaos Legion, Breath of Fire: Dragon Quater, Under the Skin, Monster Hunter and Gregory Horror Show. I keep saying this, but despite owning 50 PS2 games, I barely feel like I scratched the surface of that system.

Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Memories: Well so much for taking two weeks to beat this game. As it turned out, two solid farming sessions was all it took to turn this game into a cakewalk.

So one of the tricks of the game is knowing who to farm and when. As soon as you return to Ancient Egypt, you want to face off against Isis since she's easier and will drop a ton of dragon cards. Collect enough and you can graduate to Low Meadow Mage who will drop some of the best cards in the game, namely Meteor B. Dragon. After 225 duels, I was able to acquire just two of those cards, and would see how far it could get me. With some luck, I thought I'd barely scrape by the rest of the game.

The campaign in Forbidden Memories is fairly straight forward. The game begins in Egypt where Kaiba and Hieshen plan to kill you and take the throne of Egypt. After Hieshen beats you, you're sent to the future where you've got to win a tournament to collect all the Millenium items so you can return to your time and exact revenge. When you return, you've got to visit each elemental temple and win consecutive duels so you can collect all the Millenium items. When that occurs Kaiba leads you to a crypt where you've got to enter a boss rush and win.

During my run I found nothing could take my Meteor B Dragon. I didn't draw any horrible hands, so I was usually able to summon strong cards and it never took long to get a powered up version of MBD onto the field. The biggest setback was the forth of seven duels in the boss rush against Kaiba. He managed to play Blue-Eyes White Dragon (3000 ATK) and Gate Guardian (3750 ATK) and I couldn't get anything stronger than Twin Headed Thunder Dragon (2800 ATK). I gambled, throwing away all my cards so I could draw 5 and managed to get a Raigeki (destroy all your opponents monsters). I recovered and managed to get a MBD onto the field which made short work of his life points.

The biggest concern with the final three duels is that they each have the strongest monster in the game, Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon (4500). The only way I could measure up against that card is if I equip MBD three times or draw a Raigeki. Fortunately he didn't pop up and the toughest opponent turned out to be Gate Guardian.

There isn't much to do once you beat the campaign. You can either start a New Game + and face off against a few optional duels you may have missed or keep farming for more cards. I have a few goals in mind, namely scoring an A-TEC against Pegasus. It's considered one of the biggest challenges in the game and is a popular strategy for farming powerful magic cards.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4

I booted up my New Game+ save and found out I was half-way through the Steamy Bath House. A lot of my characters were severely underleveled, and it seemed like I was hoping my OP Persona from the compedium could carry the team. To make life easier, I spent about an hour grinding through the level. Fortunately I was able to trigger a positive Moon bonus, which meant bonus EXP for every battle. By the time I got to Shadow Kanji, the team was around Lvl 23-24 and we made short work of him. The fight was very similar to the first Seymour fight from FFX, where you've got to take out his allies first and then deal with him. While Kanji doesn't have Anima to fuck your shit up, he does like to spam a lot of AoE moves with nasty status ailments, so a fair portion of the battle was spent scouting and recovering from that.

Jumping back from Persona 5, the game definitely feels a lot quainter. The randomly generated dungeons, smaller locales, janky shadows and the like hasn't aged as well as I remember but I still think it has a lot going for it. As my entry to the series, I have it above 5, but would like to play it again. I put 150 hours into Persona 5 last year, 9 years ago, I only put in the one playthrough.

YuGiOh Medley
I've been playing some of the GBA games to see how they hold up. Worldwide Edition was based on the first five editions of the card game and was one of my most played games on the console. Unfortunately it doesn't hold up well at all largely because it's so easy to get cards, the AI is mediocre and it has something of an open-world design. You're basically playing on a board and everything you select an NPC, you move over to that tile. It's based on Battle City, so every now and then you'll be challenged by a Rare Hunter and compete in tournaments. The problem with the game is that there is a password system that's very easy to exploit. Every card in the TCG has a passcode that can be used to access it in the video games. Usually you've got to pay something to use this feature, but World-Wide Edition let's you have at it. Once you get all the cards you want, the game is virtually over. The opposite is that you grind packs, hope to get the cards you want and continue to make do with a deck that's a work in progress.

The follow up was World Tournament in 2004 and was a return to the Eternal Dualist format where you just pick opponents from tiers in a menu. They got rid of the password system, but despite having a year to get this game together, they only added one new set to the game. By the time the game was coming out, four sets had just come out and the entire game had changed.

They followed it up with World Tournament 2005, which had more of an RPG element to it. You played as a bland avatar kid, walking around Domino City challenging all the other duelists so you can steal their money and buy more packs. Like the other games, this was a year behind the TCG and the game had an annoying Final Fantasy Tactics Advance esque system where ban-lists would change every week so you'd have to constantly change your deck. On top of that, this had even less cards than the previous game. I never played this version of the game growing up and I'm glad I missed out on this.

Unfortunately, the 2006 edition fixed a lot of issues. It had just about every card released at the time of release except for a lot of useless and a couple of decent cards here and there. This time the AI was a lot more varied and instead of taking on personalities from the manga, you just take on all these crazy themed decks with cool strategies. One aspect that I like about the game is that the packs are actually based on the real life card game. So instead of buying a random pack that's loosely based on a real set, you're getting a fair representation. If you wanted a taste of classic YGO, this would be the game I'd recommend.

Finished up TellTale Batman season 1, it was good, but I found it the most technically deficient one I've played so far...not too bad, as I didn't encounter anything really until episode 4, but I had a crash, and numerous slow downs afterward. Either way, it was solid, though not their best effort. I have it: Walking Dead S1, Wolf Among Us, Tales from BorderLands, Walking Dead S2, then Batman.

Got Monster Hunter World and Dragon Ball FighterZ (I don't care what the developer says, that is Dragonball Fighter-Z) on the ay, really psyched for MHW. Haven't really gotten into the franchise before, and this looks fantastic.

Genji (PS2)
Basically Onimusha meets God of War. Samurai hack'n'slasher where you can pull off a bunch of awesome combos and dodging maneuvers. The combat is excellent. You can only get so far by just button mashing. The chain system encourages you to combine attacking, blocking and dodging so you can get as many hits in a row as possible without getting hit yourself. When done well, this is really pleasing, you feel like you're controlling a martial arts film as your character dances around enemy attacks and slays them one by one. Of course it's not so easy to do well, so there's often the frustration of getting caught by an errant blow midflow. While frustrating, it means the game is not trivial. A good kind of challenge. The boss battle are all very well designed, fun skill-based challenges.

The two playable characters adds more depth to the combat. Yoshitsune is fast, agile, but is quite fragile due to his low defense and low health. Benkei is big and slow, but relies on keeping enemies at bay by swinging his long-range weapons, and a lot of tanking. The problem with Benkei is that playing him is just not as fun or as satisfying as playing Yoshitsune. It's nice to blast through hordes of enemies without really having to dodge or block, but that gets old quickly. Fortunately the game designers were smart in giving you the freedom to choose which character to play almost all the time. So you can play all the game with Yoshitsune if you like, besides the three or four forced Benkie levels. The game also encourages exploration in that some areas can only be reached by one of the characters. Again, this is strictly optional, so although I revisited areas multiple times to find all the secrets, others may find it tedious.

The graphics are great, the cutscenes are fluid and the voice acting is above average. It's a shame that these things support a pretty shallow story, where the made up word "Amahagane" is drilled into your skull so many times until you're sick of it. It could make for a good drinking game. Take a drink every time you hear "Amahagane". The only gameplay-related flaw I can think of is the save point design, which is frustrating at times. Sometimes a save point is located fairly far away from a tough boss fight. Sometimes there are two tough boss battles in a row with no save point between them. Other than that, an excellent and unheard of game.

I continue my hack-and-slash-athon by replaying God of War. This game was beloved at the time, myself included, but playing it right after Genji exposes its flaws. The combat is visually spectacular but ultimately pretty basic. There are plenty of special moves on offer but 99% of the time you're best off mashing square. The opening level is filled with pointless and frustrating minigames. Tightrope walking with the fixed camera constantly rotating to make it easy to fall. Pushing a box to the end of a room while not having it be destroyed by enemy arrows. I started it on the hardest difficulty (God), but it was only difficult in the sense that enemies took twice as many hits to kill than on the next hardest level (on which I restarted the game) and killed you in 2-3 hits. So the only added challenge was that you had to mash square twice as much and reset a lot. At least it's generous with the respawn points.

I'll keep on going for now and see how pleasant it is on a lower difficulty. Might be that the game has aged poorly, and that the sequel fixed the problems.

The main part I felt the hardest difficulty on the original God of War is the section right at the end where you have to protect your wife and daughter. You need to play perfectly, they take massive damage, and are a bitch to protect, the Kratos doppelgangers with the purple swords can kill them in 1 hit. I actually never finished it on the the top difficulty because of this, I kept trying, they kept dying, then once I got it right down to the end, and then the Kratos in the distance wasn't affected by my attack, and he got off a lightning bolt and killed them. I haven't touched God of War since.

Kind of makes me wonder how drastically different Dad of War will be.

God of War would be so much better if there weren't so many painful minigames. The combat/platforming duo works fantastically together, but the developers sprinkled a lot of bullshit on top. It's a very fun game of course, but it would be a much smoother experience without all the block pushing and fighting while climbing things.

Jan 28, 2018 6:52:10 GMT RagnarokMike said:

The main part I felt the hardest difficulty on the original God of War is the section right at the end where you have to protect your wife and daughter. You need to play perfectly, they take massive damage, and are a bitch to protect, the Kratos doppelgangers with the purple swords can kill them in 1 hit. I actually never finished it on the the top difficulty because of this, I kept trying, they kept dying, then once I got it right down to the end, and then the Kratos in the distance wasn't affected by my attack, and he got off a lightning bolt and killed them. I haven't touched God of War since.

I can't even fathom this part or the fight with Ares on God Mode because on Hard mode after replaying this a few months ago was BRUTAL. You absolutely had to be perfect with your moves. I felt that there was one go to move to try and cheese those minions and they can swarm up on your family and mow them down. It was honestly about crowd control and to try and catch them as they respawn. You could not get em all but you had to limit damage. You had to pick your spots with the power of the gods absolutely and you COULD NOT waste anything given that meter builds purely off of damage you do so the minute you get it at max, it basically is a must to pop it and try to go for it again.

What honestly saved the day is GAINING meter from hugging your family. I hardly ever hugged them but when you inject HP towards them, you will essentially refill your meter. But this took a good hour or so to do, painful.

Don't get me started on the final boss on hard mode. 3 phases, all were fucking horrific. The game in the final 2 hours throws so much bullshit at you, it soured what was an initial perfectly fine experience(Played it on normal mode my 1st playthrough YEARS ago, this was my 3rd playthrough recently and boy I went for hard mode).

I don't remember the endgame of God of War at all, but I completed it many years ago on my first playthrough, presumably on Normal difficulty, so it can't be that bad. Maybe. I do remember having an awful time with some of the final levels of God of War 2. We'll see how it goes, I guess.

Jan 29, 2018 20:42:32 GMT Emperor said:

I don't remember the endgame of God of War at all, but I completed it many years ago on my first playthrough, presumably on Normal difficulty, so it can't be that bad. Maybe. I do remember having an awful time with some of the final levels of God of War 2. We'll see how it goes, I guess.

On normal difficulty, it's not that bad, really just great fun on normal. On the highest difficulty, whole new ballgame. Enemies both take and deal so much more damage, on the mission protecting your wife and child, the Kratos doppelgangers actually move forward through your lightning. Much like protecting the wife and child in 1, the gauntlet near the end of 2 is also a Herculean feat. I beat all God of War games on normal, 0 on the highest difficulty...and it's not often I start a game and not finish, but they got the best of me. I'll give it another go someday, but have too much other stuff to play right now.

Jan 31, 2018 10:21:11 GMT RagnarokMike said:

Jan 29, 2018 20:42:32 GMT Emperor said:

I don't remember the endgame of God of War at all, but I completed it many years ago on my first playthrough, presumably on Normal difficulty, so it can't be that bad. Maybe. I do remember having an awful time with some of the final levels of God of War 2. We'll see how it goes, I guess.

On normal difficulty, it's not that bad, really just great fun on normal. On the highest difficulty, whole new ballgame. Enemies both take and deal so much more damage, on the mission protecting your wife and child, the Kratos doppelgangers actually move forward through your lightning. Much like protecting the wife and child in 1, the gauntlet near the end of 2 is also a Herculean feat. I beat all God of War games on normal, 0 on the highest difficulty...and it's not often I start a game and not finish, but they got the best of me. I'll give it another go someday, but have too much other stuff to play right now.

As I said, I found the highest difficulty pretty much unbearable even on the first levels, can't imagine what the endgame would be like. I'm on Hard now, so one above Normal and one below God. It's reasonably tough but nothing crazy. Might get too tough by the end of the game. I remember spending hours and hours trying to finish the gauntlet on God of War 2. That was at least five years ago, I reckon. I wouldn't have the patience to do that now. I'm so much older :lol:

Played a bit of Monster Hunter World, I like the world, monsters, and crafting...but the combat leaves much to be desired, a stubborn dodge roll especially. Also has some hitbox problems, as a monster that missed its charge by a wide margin still sent me flying like it had made contact. I'm noticing most of the combat issues (aside from how basic it is) popping up when you're fighting on inclined, uneven ground. Like it confuses itself by the angle.

That said, if you're into the grind, there's some decent fun to be found. So far I've only tested 2 (of the dozen or so) weapons, so maybe I'll find one that really fits my style as I continue.

Went to the goodwill today and found me this thing (found image on google).



It was cheap so I got it. Arriving home and I open it up to find a couple games. Wasn't really expecting that. Guy or gal must of been a sports fan cause it had:
NFL Gameday 99 (PS1)
NBA Live 99 (PS1)
MLB 99 (PS1)
NCAA Football 99 (PS1)
NCAA March Madness 99 (PS1)
Madden 2000 (PS1)
NFL Gameday 2000 (PS1)
NBA Live 2003 (PS2)
Madden 2004 (PS2)

All that for 5 bucks.

Eh, I think I'm over Monster Hunter World, not a bad game, just not my cup of tea. With something like Horizon, even doing the same things, felt like I was always moving forward; the mission set-up of MHW leaves me feeling like I'm just running in circles. And I'm not finding any of the weapons particularly satisfying, I think it's really designed to be multiplayer, one-on-one confrontations are tediously drawn out, and the combat isn't entertaining enough for that. This game with Nioh's combat could really be something.

Nov 29, 2017 1:07:48 GMT Call said:

Sims 4 on console is proving to be very glitchy, i've had to reset a few times just to keep progress going.

The company I work at actually made those console versions. :lol:

Hopefully those glitches have been resolved by now. Though I didn't work on the game myself, you should tell me if there are still problems so I can give the team shit about it.

Dec 10, 2017 12:37:11 GMT Emperor said:

The problem I have with the job system is switching roles can be such a pain in the ass. You have to carry around a set of equipment for every single character/class combination you intend to use. Then when a bunch of new jobs are unlocked, you have to buy a ton more equipment and keep it hanging around. The alternative is to use the same jobs for the whole game, but that often isn't feasible, nor is it particularly fun. The exception is FFI, which forces fixed jobs from the start and is still awesome. Perhaps the reason that game works is because there's so few job options. Come to think of it, FFIX is basically a job system game in all but name. Vivi is a black mage and can't do anything else. Zidane is a thief, and so on. It might work for the same reason FFI works: the jobs are fixed from the start and there are relatively few of them.

Honestly, RPGs without an explicit job system do the job system better. Take FFVII for example. I have a mage, a warrior, and sort of an all-rounder. I didn't need to explicitly assign a job to do that. I did it by assigning Vincent a ton of magic/summon materia, which boosts his magic power and MP while reducing his attack, defense, and HP. Conversely, Yuffie has none of that materia, but materia like Deathblow, HP Plus, Counter Attack, and 2xCut which enhances her physical attack power. Cloud is similar. He has more support materia like Enemy Skill and Cover, but he's primarily a physical attacker. When I was younger and didn't know what I was doing, every character was a jack of all trades and thus nowhere near as effective as they could be.

Looks like I've identified the problems I have with the job system: too many jobs is bad, and being able to switch jobs at any moment is bad.

As someone who loves the job system, I feel I have to respond to this post to give an argument from the other side. Final Fantasy Tactics is my favorite game of all time, so I can't claim to be objective, but I can explain why I like it.

You describe switching roles as being a pain in the ass, and everything you say about it is true, but those facts does not reach the same conclusion for me. Yes, you have to rebuy equipment, but that is all part of the game. You're supposed to spend your gil on something, after all. Plus the path can be smoothed over by having handy-down equipment from someone you have upgraded to the next class. I felt pretty cool when I reused equipment in this way since I am the king of efficiency. I basically just only sold equipment if I knew I wouldn't ever be using that class again and I ended up having plenty of money to do everything I wanted throughout the game while only having to do an extra battle or two to farm now and then.

It is certainly not expected to use the same jobs throughout the game. In fact, doing so will put you at a major disadvantage since you can retain abilities from other jobs. The best soldiers are well rounded ones that have the best abilities from other jobs as well. I found this mechanic incredibly satisfying. You aren't just strategizing during the battles, but before them as well. I felt like a real battle commander involved in directing my troops training as well as their movements. It adds an entire layer of depth to the game. You are more attached to the characters when you've put your heart and soul into building them up from scratch rather than just someone who is "generic black mage lad" that you are supposed to care about because he is a black mage in the story. Yes, characters like that can be great when their backstory is built up, but many games just don't do this at all.

I typically hate over-customization in games, but it just works for me in this one as a good amount. Oddly enough, I also didn't like the "job system" in FFVII very much at all. Assigning materia just felt very...flimsy. I'd rather be able to just tell a character he is now a black mage and then select a black mage spell for him to train one after the other. I hate constantly having to get new items (/materia) in games and having to spend time thinking about who they are best suited for. That's what is too much of a pain for me.