What are you playing?

[paprikastaude]

Playing some RE:Revelaitons while waiting for RE8.

fixed

[HardcoreRetro]

Finally had one of the scenes I was waiting for in Watch_Dogs Legions. Some scene about someone being brainwashed and commiting suicide.

Writing on the quality of: "Ah bruv, that's a right bother." With a fucking shit modulated voice. Good stuff.

[Joe Molotov]

Playing some RE:Revelaitons while waiting for RE8.

fixed

It's not the 3DS version!

[Bebpo]

Finished two more characters in SaGa Frontier, the Kamen Rider/Super Sentai Red scenario & Lute's which is like < 1 hour with NG+

Red's was alright, the sentai stuff was cool, and it had its moments, but it's so rushed it just doesn't work and the gameplay mechanics of transforming into your super sentai suit are kinda annoying. Lute's was a joke. So far T260G's been the best, but Emelia's girl power mercs was great too.

Doing Asellus next. I've finished all the optional shared content between the characters at this point so just doing the main scenarios and grinding a bit if I need to. Should be pretty quick. Probably finish the remaining 4 characters and the game this week.

[tiesto]

Finished two more characters in SaGa Frontier, the Kamen Rider/Super Sentai Red scenario & Lute's which is like < 1 hour with NG+

Red's was alright, the sentai stuff was cool, and it had its moments, but it's so rushed it just doesn't work and the gameplay mechanics of transforming into your super sentai suit are kinda annoying. Lute's was a joke. So far T260G's been the best, but Emelia's girl power mercs was great too.

Doing Asellus next. I've finished all the optional shared content between the characters at this point so just doing the main scenarios and grinding a bit if I need to. Should be pretty quick. Probably finish the remaining 4 characters and the game this week.

Are you doing NG+ for each character or starting fresh?

I've been playing more Albert Odyssey but getting really frustrated. I'm at a point where you have to beat 4 towers to get into the final dungeon, and beat the first tower yesterday... but then after fighting a boss who literally took 45 min to beat (using the same strategy over and over ad nauseum), and on my way back to a save point, the game decided to crash, so I lost about an hour and a half. I've had a crash bug a few times with this game but it usually happened pretty quickly after saving.

[HardcoreRetro]

Every time I play one of these Ubisoft games I look at these massive maps they created and think about how it will only be used for this one game.

Watch_Dogs: Legion's London deserved a better game.

[Don Rumata]

People got up in arms because they reused the height maps of FC4, in FC Primal. 

Personally i think they should milk these worlds more in general, with particularly big open worlds.
Look at how Yakuza was able to milk Kamurocho, and that's not even a big map.

It seems like a waste to have something like RDR2's world, and use it once.

[Bebpo]

Finished two more characters in SaGa Frontier, the Kamen Rider/Super Sentai Red scenario & Lute's which is like < 1 hour with NG+

Red's was alright, the sentai stuff was cool, and it had its moments, but it's so rushed it just doesn't work and the gameplay mechanics of transforming into your super sentai suit are kinda annoying. Lute's was a joke. So far T260G's been the best, but Emelia's girl power mercs was great too.

Doing Asellus next. I've finished all the optional shared content between the characters at this point so just doing the main scenarios and grinding a bit if I need to. Should be pretty quick. Probably finish the remaining 4 characters and the game this week.

Are you doing NG+ for each character or starting fresh?

NG+

It mainly just speeds up re-leveling specific recruitable characters that you already leveled in a previous scenario. Also starting off with all the best gear and infinite money (although there's a trick to get infinite money really fast on your first playthrough anyhow).

[paprikastaude]

People got up in arms because they reused the height maps of FC4, in FC Primal. 

Personally i think they should milk these worlds more in general, with particularly big open worlds.
Look at how Yakuza was able to milk Kamurocho, and that's not even a big map.

It seems like a waste to have something like RDR2's world, and use it once.

People binge those Yakuza games, so I might be in the minority, but I don't like that Kamurocho rehashing at all. Makes me want to skip every game that doesn't introduce a new engine or graphical standard. Just makes me feel tired exploring the same thing over and over, making the series feel like replays of one game instead of new games. RDR2 still has an online mode, which is probably the best way to reuse such things. Not open world, but in Resident Evil Revelations 2 online Raid Mode, there's maps from RE6 too.

[Don Rumata]

I think you have a point that tying crucial story beats to the same map over decades can work against it.
You could do it in a case of using a map to tell separated stories though, with the expectation that not everybody will jump back in.

Usually examples of this are story expansions, but you can theoretically extend the idea to full games.
For example i played Infamous First Light without playing Second Son (i did, much later, and didn't even like it), or someone may play Miles Morales without touching Spiderman 2019, or GTA4's expansions without playing GTA4.
Or the PSP GTAs using Liberty City from 3 or Vice City.

Even with games like Assassin's Creed, i think the idea is that you'll be skipping every other one at least, unless you're some hardcore fan.
Could even push companies to do less bloated games, since they wouldn't feel as pressured to make use of the investment immediately.

Another example i'm thinking of is Hitman's maps, it'd be nice if they kept adding variations like the Sapienza one with the festival/movie set.
You can get a lot of mileage from a good map.

The worst example for me is probably Just Cause.
Instead of refining one massive map, they kept creating new, massive but half-assed worlds every time.

[Nintex]

People got up in arms because they reused the height maps of FC4, in FC Primal.  :trumps

Personally i think they should milk these worlds more in general, with particularly big open worlds.
Look at how Yakuza was able to milk Kamurocho, and that's not even a big map.

It seems like a waste to have something like RDR2's world, and use it once.

One of the best Far Cry games is Blood Dragon and that's essentially just a mod with copy pasted assets.

[I'm a Puppy!]

Ogre Battle (SNES): the battle continues and I'm totally enthralled. I restarted as I found I mis-leveled my team. And man I'm addicted. Shame that this version of the Ogre series never moved beyond the N64. It's frankly a lot more compelling than most tactics games out there. Totally love it. 

[Bebpo]

Just beat Avengers main story campaign.

That was one of the worst videogames I've ever played.

The graphics, the cutscenes, the dialogue writing, the VA are all great. Troy Baker's Bruce Banner has got to be one of the best Banners ever. Kamala was really good and had fantastic facial animation & VA. The story was ok with a bunch of GAAS filler, but whatever.

But man, the actual gameplay in the levels is just fucking awful. SO MUCH PLATFORMING when the platforming controls are just total shit. You'd think they'd realize they aren't nailing the platforming and just drop it.

Every fucking area looks like the same generic desert or base. Every level is just mindless combat. Those king of the hill bits? Yuck.

Also terrible player messaging. So many bits I had no fucking idea what the game wanted me to do.

The combat itself is ok, but the levels are just so bad and bland and repetitive there's nothing fun to use the combat in. Also the combat is not really as tight as it should be for dodging/parrying/etc... and feels sluggish compared to good action games.

I feel like GAAS focus from corporate just killed this game. Given the cutscenes are good and the combat is fine, I feel like if Crystal Dynamics was left alone to just make a cinematic AAA single player game it probably would've been ok, especially if they dropped the damn loose platforming. But all the GAAS design decisions just turn the game into the most bland level design ever. It's a complete bore to play.

I realized about 70% in that there's no reason to even fight enemies, might as well just run to the objective marker past all enemies and just fight the ones required to make the levels as short as possible.

I also skipped almost all the side missions, because the ones I did were all junk filler and I just wanted to finish the main story as quickly as possible to get it over with.

I'll check out the Kate Bishop/Hawkeye mini-campaigns since people said they're more linear and single player focused and better than the main game, but woof, that main game was pretty shit. Felt like I was playing those old licensed videogames that were like 5/10 gameplay but you still played them because you liked the IP.

[Svejk]

I realized about 70% in that there's no reason to even fight enemies, might as well just run to the objective marker past all enemies and just fight the ones required to make the levels as short as possible.

Sounds like Omega Force could've made a better game, at a 1/3 of the price, in about 1/4 of time of development.     

[demi]

You can blame Sony for fucking up Avengers too with their dumb ass exclusivity shit. BTW which [still] isnt released lmao

[Joe Molotov]

The first areas where you’re on the bridge and then when you’re playing as Kamala felt like the start of a really cool, story-driven, action-adventure game. Then after the first two hours, the game is “okay have fun with all these procedurally generated quests now lol, it’s a gaas gaas gaas”.

[tiesto]

Finished two more characters in SaGa Frontier, the Kamen Rider/Super Sentai Red scenario & Lute's which is like < 1 hour with NG+

Red's was alright, the sentai stuff was cool, and it had its moments, but it's so rushed it just doesn't work and the gameplay mechanics of transforming into your super sentai suit are kinda annoying. Lute's was a joke. So far T260G's been the best, but Emelia's girl power mercs was great too.

Doing Asellus next. I've finished all the optional shared content between the characters at this point so just doing the main scenarios and grinding a bit if I need to. Should be pretty quick. Probably finish the remaining 4 characters and the game this week.

Are you doing NG+ for each character or starting fresh?

I've been playing more Albert Odyssey but getting really frustrated. I'm at a point where you have to beat 4 towers to get into the final dungeon, and beat the first tower yesterday... but then after fighting a boss who literally took 45 min to beat (using the same strategy over and over ad nauseum), and on my way back to a save point, the game decided to crash, so I lost about an hour and a half. I've had a crash bug a few times with this game but it usually happened pretty quickly after saving.

Well, if anyone is interested in playing Albert Odyssey, I have found out what makes the game crash - if you leave your character idle in a dungeon for a few min (like around 5 or so), then get into a battle, the game will just sit there, and not load the battle music/command menu.

[Bebpo]

The first areas where you’re on the bridge and then when you’re playing as Kamala felt like the start of a really cool, story-driven, action-adventure game. Then after the first two hours, the game is “okay have fun with all these procedurally generated quests now lol, it’s a gaas gaas gaas”.

I think the first level and the last level are good, and everything in-between sucks.

They should've kept the way the game switches you between characters in those levels for all the levels and refined it to make it feel like a team thing, but of course that wouldn't work for MP.

[Bebpo]

Almost through the Kate Bishop campaign in Avengers

It's ...better, but mostly because being shorter you level faster and actually get to unlock moves like a normal single player game. Plus Kate's movelist is pretty rock solid. I'm close to the last mission I think and I'm already the same level/power level as Kamala who I mained through the original campaign. Also to make this easier I'm leveling up every piece of gear I find to max the second I find it.

But...this is still a 6/10 at best in single player. I have a feeling this is like those X360-era games where in MP with your buddies it's a good 8/10 fun romp, but in SP since the game is made for MP, and the SP w/AI buddies are terrible, it just kinda sucks. I know there were a bunch of games like that during that era, but off the top of my head I just think of RE5 except this is 10x worse since it's 4p with 3 AIs instead of just one useless AI. Here, your AI buddies suck butt and half the time I get to the fights before my buddies and so I'm doing 1/4th DPS against the enemies and no wonder they take so long to die and I get surrounded and die in like 2 seconds.

The king of the hill segments are probably fine in MP with friends each holding a spot, but in SP your AI will not ever hold a fucking spot and you're scrambling around and its godawful.

Hell if I was playing this with friends I could see the post-game grind being fun for a few weeks going through all the missions and maxing out characters. But solo...fuck noooooooo, gonna get my Kate clear then my Clint clear and then drop this until Black Panther comes out in the fall and I'll probably run through his campaign which will probably be shitty MP focused too.

[Bebpo]

I realized about 70% in that there's no reason to even fight enemies, might as well just run to the objective marker past all enemies and just fight the ones required to make the levels as short as possible.

Sounds like Omega Force could've made a better game, at a 1/3 of the price, in about 1/4 of time of development. 

So this got me thinking, the way the weapons/gear power up grind is in Avengers is actually really close to a Musou/DW game even if the combat itself isn't.

Which got me thinking that DW/Musou would work really well as a GAAS game. Easily make it 4p gear/weapon/skills post-game grind with new content and gear and characters continually added.

So yeah, Crystal Dynamics & SE should've just made a DW ripoff with Avengers if they wanted to do this GAAS model.

[Svejk]

Finished Baldur's Gate:EE.     Seravok was a PITA, but got him eventually.  I started that game well over 2 years ago.     I'm reminded once again of what Bioware was back in the day.       Will probably jump onto KOTOR 2 before doing BG2:EE though.  Not sure why I never played KOTOR 2 back then.    Played the first one multiple times.

[HardcoreRetro]

I miss daddy Nier. Come back to me daddy Nier!  :'(

[ZombieSupaStar]

Might do a playthru of Chrono Trigger using this romhack chrono trigger plus: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3691/

         Restored content

    Battle2 and Singing Mountain music tracks added
 
  Octorider, Johnny and Frog King enemies can now be fought
     
       A few restored lines from the pre-release re-added

   Added unused guns for Lucca with unique projectiles.

       Destroyed dome and coliseum map tiles added.

       Magus' keep now fully visible on the world map.

                 Cut Zeal dungeon re-added


                            Nu content
   
      MSU-1 music fully integrated (still requires the tracks)

      The two other islands in Zeal are now fully explorable
     
      1999 is now fully accesible

      Full new dungeon in 2300ad
     
      Chrono's mom has a bedroom

      Choras has a small ferry station.
     
      Reptite Village in 65000000Bc

      Optional battle with the 'Prophet' in the second visit to Zeal

      More scenes with the whole party.   

      Frog will be in his human form in cutscenes if Magus is
      beaten, hopefully a fully playable Glenn will be available soon.                 
     
      All items now have descriptions.   
     
      you can now save Zeal by beating Lavos in the Ocean Palace..

Thought of trying to play chrono cross but saw a rough story over view and man wtf happened in that game. They did my CT homies wrong! Plus CTs story seems lighthearted enough over “I’m a teenager and this is deep!” Of what cross tried to be. Maybe I could have stomached it back in 1999 but not now lol.

 

[Bebpo]

Avengers - Finished Kate Bishop campaign last night when had insomnia. That was a pretty fucking long campaign for what I thought would be a 1-2 hour DLC. Probably ~4 hours.

Was ok, 6-7/10. Started Hawkeye Clint campaign. Was a bit annoying since solo playing with no revives is frustrating against BS enemies (the adaptoid enemies are so annoying to fight against in this game, especially that they drain your cooldowns which is the worst move ever in a game with cooldowns).

I sorta feel against larger/tougher enemies the combat is broken in that you barely do shit damage outside your cooldowns so you just save your cooldowns for the big enemies and then run around trying to survive, getting some hits in until they pop again. The cooldown time is so friggen slow compared to other games with cooldowns. And you only have THREE. Most games with cooldowns you have like a dozen skills on cooldowns so something is always coming off cooldown. This game is like you pop your three and then wait 2-3 minutes until you can use them again.

Everything about the game just seems really poorly designed and anti-fun. I don't get how they didn't look at other GAAS stuff like PoE/Destiny or whatever and not just copy that shit.

[demi]

FF12 is full of barren open fields and it is obnoxious. So glad Zodiac Age has a fast forward button. This is tedious as shit

[Bebpo]

FF12 is full of barren open fields and it is obnoxious. So glad Zodiac Age has a fast forward button. This is tedious as shit

Well it is an offline MMO and MMOs are barren open fields.

Like I love FF14 but the fields are pretty pointless generally since there's no point in fighting most mobs on the map.

[demi]

So we agree FF12 is pretty shit

[Bebpo]

So we agree FF12 is pretty shit

Nah, I like the gambit system/auto-battle and found the story & characters compelling until about midway (around Cid's tower) where it just turns dumb animu and falls apart. Rabanatre is a great city and the questing is fun even if it's mostly just MMO quests. The harder bosses are good gameplay figuring out good gambit setups and the art/music is top-notch and the world feels cohesive and huge.

I've never tried the Zodiac version though, put like 120 hours into the original at release and haven't felt like going back.

[Bebpo]

I'd be down for another FF that played like FF12 but with a better story.

[benjipwns]

Now with visible screenshots:

Games this week: Aces of the Luftwaffe, Cally's Caves 3, Door Kickers: Action Squad, GemBreak, Go Home Dinosaurs!, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault War Chest, Teddy Floppy Ear - The Race, Turmoil

Almost gave out four stars to Door Kickers and Turmoil... I may yet change my mind! Both are promoted to "pending full meal" (aka won't uninstall them yet) status. Cally's Caves 3 might stick around too.

[Bebpo]

Finished the Hawkeye campaign in Avengers. It was actually a good single player game and kinda shows that without all this MP/GAAS bullshit, they probably could've made a decent single player game.

Hawkeye is the best playing character in the cast so far. Unlike Kate Bishop where arrows are her strongest moves, Hawkeye is basically just a melee sword guy with arrows for cooldown auto-attacks. So he plays like Metal Gear Rising/DMC sword juggles and dashes with some arrow attacks. He's a lot of fun to use and it actually plays like a real action game. Plus there's actually a story, even if it's just ok.

And the Maestro boss fight was pretty interesting. Dude felt like an FF14 boss. Was pretty tough and AoE's and unblockable attacks and you really gotta learn the moves and the fight goes on a long time like an MMO length fight. Avengers actually feels like a proper Destiny/FF14 style MMO during this one part.

So while it's too late to save the game I'm sure, the DLC shows some interesting ideas with a solid single player action game and then an MMO style boss. Hopefully the Black Panther campaign is at least as good as the Hawkeye one, but hopefully even better.

I'd say from a single player only perspective of Avengers:

Main Campaign - 4-5 / 10
Kate Bishop Campaign 6-7 / 10
Hawkye Campaign 7-8 / 10

I think the Hawkeye one is the only one that's fun enough to really be enjoyable to the point I actually explored around and did all the side stuff on the maps for the loot and because I actually was enjoying the combat for once.

Oh and that's the other thing, if the game had a fucking mini-map/map I'd boost all those scores by at least 1 full point. The purposeful design choice to be a big open world map game with multiple objectives and NO MAP AT ALL and just compass markers is some real bullshit. Sometimes it's like how the fuck do I get to this marker there is a wall in my face and you just end up going around half the map to get there. It's so dumb.


I also tried one multiplayer quick match with randoms to see how the game plays with humans instead of AI teammates. It's somewhat more fun and definitely easier, but with randoms it has the problem of these big open maps with multiple objectives and people tend to split up and just wander off and do their own thing and it's tough getting the team to actually stick together and go towards the same objective. Just dumb design.

I think I'm good on this now, doubt I'll come back before Black Panther campaign.

[naff]

finished Control, played some of the post game content. will def muck around with this for a bit longer and grind out some better gear, though i was kinda hoping for something a little more storywise in the post game. first game in a long time (since dark souls) where i've actually bothered reading all the little story items you collect.

also finished Zelda BOTW the other week finally, just hadn't bothered to go to ganon since getting to that final part a year+ ago lol. extremely easy and anticlimactic end, though i had preem gear. would've been better to just go str8 after activating the things. guess i shoudl go get all the memories and replay for the true ending.... played some of that zelda inspired rogue-lite Windborn last night as v stoned and made some impulse purchases on psn, it's aiight but very janky. enemy animations often just skip to them attacking out of nowhere, sailing is slow and boring. gives me a lot of appreciation for the feel of the sailing in wind waker. still an ok time sink, and a little more than the sum of it's parts but can't imagine i'll keep playing this for long. 

been playing Odyssey, NSMB and ff9 on switch. im now further in ff9 than i ever have gotten in the past (just got to the final disc/have the airship and got the mirrors from the castle), the only ff i've started a couple times but never finished. i know it's well loved, but i find it to be one of the more tedious entries i've played. my least favourite psx entry for sure. very charming graphically, but slow, tedious, im not very engaged by the world and tetra master is the dumbest fucking side game i have ever played. i also feel railroaded into using the OP chars (vivi, dagger, steiner) because they're clearly the most powerful and more relevant to the story than the others generally. nabbed a free copy of FF7r from a friend who's done with it, will jump in once the intergrade ps5 update and yuffie dlc is available.

[naff]

oh damn, Intergrade isn't out til June 10th. i thought it was early May 

[Tuckers Law]

Been on vacation and stupidly downloaded slay the spire to my tablet because I needed to test something out with my account.

Now I can’t stay away from the game, it’s too addicting 

[Tuckers Law]

The worst part is I had just shaken my Valheim addiction and was wanting to get to something less...infinite.

[The Sceneman]

Got 1000/1000 in Wolfenstein the Old Blood. Good game but the combat challenges were a grind.

Now playing Ori and the Blind Forest or whatever its called. Ehhh, the platforming is floaty and the world building is super trite and generic ferngully shit. The animation and colours are beautiful though and the music is nice. I'll prob 100% it and not bother with the special run achievements. Just feels like a way lamer Hollow Knight clone designed by committee to be more child friendly or something

[Nintex]

Ori is fun but quite overrated.

Still playing Nier

"What a strange game"

You don't say Weiss 

Also a game that does not respect the time of the player in any way shape or form.
I've never had to do a walking back and forth quest that took about an hour in total to complete with no reward except a "valuable lesson" before.

[Bebpo]

Ori is good

Ori 2 is very good

[naff]

Lol, Ori is extremely slick and came out years before hollow knight. Not a revolutionary game, just a really good one.

[Don Rumata]

The two Ori games are the only 2d platformers i can stand, in terms of movement feel and gameplay.
It helps that they're pretty comfy and easy to go through.

[The Sceneman]

Lol oops, I mixed up the Ori release dates and thought it was a much newer game. My opinion on the world building still stands though. I hate the stupid deep voice that keeps turning up just to say some BS

[Don Rumata]

Also the movement feels much different from Hollow Knight to me (given that they're in the same genre, ofc.).

[Bebpo]

Yeah, they're completely different games.

Ori is a platformer, Hollow Knight is an action rpg.

[Don Rumata]

I mean they're both metroidvanias with combat and platforming, but they feel quite different to me.

[naff]

lmao, FF7r has a summon materia locked behind $30 dlc  they're really going to milk nostalgia for this game for all it's worth eh.

and no, I will not pay for cactuar as much as I like that dude

[The Sceneman]

wait for the ultimate\complete edition in a couple years

[HardcoreRetro]

Or just look it up on youtube and play the game with the shit that's included.

[naff]

oh yeah, I am. airbuster str8 into the reno fight

this game is sick, really hitting the high notes

[naff]

wait for the ultimate\complete edition in a couple years

ff7r intergrade deluxe digital is $165 on psn 

you can pick up a disc copy for around $25 here secondhand that can be upgraded to intergrade for free then it's $20 or something to get the yuffie pack. game is fantastic anyway and I'm playing a disc copy I nabbed for free.

[MMaRsu]

Been on vacation and stupidly downloaded slay the spire to my tablet because I needed to test something out with my account.

Now I can’t stay away from the game, it’s too addicting 

Once you finish it with a few classes its quite dull imo

[Mr. Nobody]

Since the PS5 isn't fucking happening  I bought myself a Switch and a bunch of games.

BotW is fucking incredible, holy shit.

Super Mario Odyssey was good.

Portable Mario Kart 8 is something I never knew I needed.

Ace Attorney Trilogy's updated visuals are actually worth the price and the Great Ace Attorney games have finally been localized 

Might try Astral Chain next.

[Nintex]

Enjoy!

Everything plays better on Switch(TM)

[Bebpo]

Finished all 7 of the original characters in Saga Frontier. Great game, some character scenarios are way more fleshed out than others. Gonna do the new Fuse scenario which is basically epilogue endings to all 7 and see what it adds.

[Bebpo]

Finished all the new Fuse scenarios in Saga Frontier Remastered. The Fuse bits are short, but holy hell do they fix a lot of these storylines.

Fuse has 7 scenarios, each is basically a 2021 writer retelling the intended storyline of each character scenario as a short VN fleshing it out so it actually makes sense, flows and has an ending. A few of the storylines I was kind lukewarm on in the original runs I like now post Fuse retelling version. Like Lute & Blue especially.

I'd say SaGa Frontier 1 is as good as FF7/8, Suikoden II, Xenogears, FFT/TO as the best jrpgs of that era and some of the best jrpgs ever. It's an incredibly ambitious game, that's a lot of fun (although pretty broken gameplay-wise) and has a bizarre fleshed out world full of locations and NPCs that you get to experience through all the different character scenarios which use different locations/NPCs.

This remaster is pretty incredible. The amount of additions to an older game along with the upgraded visuals and speed options and stuff. Like Tactics Ogre PSP is one of the best remasters ever of a classic game with some modern improvements, but I think this is probably an even better and bigger remaster. You can tell they put a lot of effort into this since it's a cult classic that a lot of people love and there's no other game that's quite like it.

That said, after playing 7 characters and then Fuse x 7 for 14 runs total, I am totally OK with the next SaGa game I play just being a single longer run without the shared content repetition of multiple scenarios. Probably will play The Last Remnant and Romancing SaGa 3 next, though I might jump go for SaGa 2 DS since that one is weird & wacky too. Probably play Romancing SaGa 2 & Scarlet Grace after I go through those ones.

Also it took me about 50 hours to do everything in this. Without the NG+ system they added, probably would've been 80 hours and the Fuse bits would have been impossible since they're just a VN with a final boss fight which only works if you NG+ carry everything over and can jump right into the final boss.

[Tuckers Law]

What platform did you play on Bebpo, PC?

[Bebpo]

What platform did you play on Bebpo, PC?

Played it on Switch for the portability. The remaster looks gorgeous on the Switch screen/resolution and fits perfectly.

Funny enough for a 24 year old game, it has freezes at least the Switch version. Had maybe 4-5 freezes/crashes. Not even in like battle, it usually crashed just running through a town screen, like I moved too quickly before it could load something. The game auto-saves every room and you get in the habit of quick saving constantly (R+triangle) as well as keeping multiple saves so it never cost me more than a couple minutes. But still, game needs some QA there, wonder if they'll bother to patch it since SE post-launch support is generally non-existent.

[tiesto]

Beat Albert Odyssey on Thursday - what a nightmare of a final dungeon... carnival-esque music that doesn't really fit the area it belongs to (a floating sci-fi city with laser-red hexagonal floors), warps and passages everywhere, a counterintuitive progression (you have to use elevators to go up and down to certain floors, and warps will send you throughout the tower, so you can't even tell if you're making progress), and a nightmarish encounter rate. It got so confusing that I felt I was wandering around the same few floors in perpetuity, till I reverted to a mid-dungeon save and then just used a guide to find my way. The final battles didn't seem to take me as long individually as any of the bosses of the 4 towers that proceeded the final dungeon. Glad to be done with this, honestly if you like 90s WD humor it may be worth playing up until you get the airship and have to go to the 4 towers. Then the best part (the humor) pretty much stops and you just have a big grind.

Also been playing a lot of the vastly better Magic Knight Rayearth... a fun if slightly sluggish (before you get the insta-dash) action RPG. It has the WD problem of rebalanced bosses that all seem to drag on for 2x as long as they should, but the bright visuals are nice and some of the music is good. I'm pretty close to the end, just collecting the 'amulet' bonus items that I missed so I can unlock some neat special items.

And playing some of the Saturn mode of Radiant Silvergun. I love the RPG like progression even if shmup snobs shit all over it... it feels cool that I can level up my weapons and make the beginning portions of the game absolute cake. This game is such a technical masterpiece for the system, and the over-the-top epic Hitoshi Sakimoto soundtrack only adds to that feel. It's probably my alltime favorite shmup.

And a slew of random NES games, of course. Ikari Warriors 2P with my best friend, what a broken mess of a game with super long levels, awful controls, glitches galore (we got to a part where my friend spawned on another background layer, he was invincible to everything but eventually got stuck at the end of the 3rd level). And Micronics other big NES "hit", Tiger Heli... which is actually originally a Toaplan game. This one isn't great (it has that low framerate Micronics were known for) but much better than

Gonna start Berseria once I'm done with Rayearth. Been too long since I've played a Tales game, tbh Graces F turned me off from the series a bit, sadly right when it was starting to have a little renaissance in America after years of no localizations. So I haven't played Hearts, Xillia 1 and 2, Zesteria, or Berseria... even though I keep buying them.

[The Sceneman]

Is Star Wars Squadrons any good?

[Bebpo]

Played the first dungeon/hour of The Last Remnant/Scarlet Grace/Romancing Saga 3/SaGa 2 DS to check them out. They all seem pretty different and great except Romancing SaGa 3 which is slow and really needs a 2x or 3x battle speed QoL option (I'm assuming RS2 has the same issue). The music in Scarlet Grace is really good, I didn't even recognize it as Kenji Ito because its such a different choir-esque style. I thought it would be Hamauzu since he did Saga Frontier 2 and Unlimited Saga and that's more his style.

The Last Remnant seems cool but this whole team battle thing where you don't directly control your characters is weird and a bit off-putting initially to me. Never been into auto-battle type combat and it's a bit hard to follow the combat in TLR initially. Also the main character is lolz.

Is Star Wars Squadrons any good?

That's what I hear. I only played the first mission or two in VR and was neat but wasn't super into it.

[Bebpo]

Also just picked up and tried the Alliance Alive HD remaster on Switch. This seems...really good? Like it looks better than BD2 from an artstyle perspective even though it's a DS or 3DS game port up, and the gameplay systems seem numerous and good with a lot of strategy options. Music seems nice too and writing is Murayama. Feel like I'd play this before BD2 or even Octopath Traveler.