Not sure that I've ever played a crpg before this. Loved the world building and how contained the base story was. Controls were a little funky on console and it definitely felt like a Kickstarter game. I think it suffered (for me) from some of that DA:I problems of lots of content that you're not expected to do every playthrough since that's not how I play games. I'm gonna do everything I can and I'm only ever playing it once. The sequel is on Gamepass so I'm looking forward to seeing how they iterated on it but I'm gonna need a break in between.
3.5 Division 2: Warlords of New York (Xbox) - 15 ish hours
It's more Division, for all the good and bad that that entails. Like the other entries the good bits are all in the side stories while the campaign is meh. Controls are still as tight as ever.
Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
3. Imperator: Rome (667 hours)
Played through a full campaign starting as the Persian minor power of Atropatene and ending as the Empire of Persia. There was a big patch since the last time I played Imperator and the experience was, different, not really better or worse honestly. I think the game is pretty decent as far as Paradox's grand strategy games go but not their best offering. Still, I had a pretty good time and if you like strategy and the roman time period I'd suggest picking it up if it's on sale for $30 or so.
Good little puzzle game. No section ever overstays it's welcome, the puzzles are generally quick and simple, it does a nice mix of flipping between more actiony puzzles and figure out how to get into this room kinds.
It did have one terrible Towers of Hanoi iteration but enough button mashing got me through, and although I didn't find this out until I had already beat it apparently it's initial configuration is static and can be beat in 4 moves.
The prologue dialog is also not good. Definitely written for the player and doesn't respect what your character would already have known. Cleans up once you got past it though.
I may be using the wrong puzzle term. It's one of those puzzles with 4 lights and 4 switches, each switch toggles the state of multiple lights and you have to get all 4 lights on. This one had 3 different states that the lights would cycle through.
Yes, that explains it. Tower of Hanoi is a different puzzle - the one with a stack of sequentially smaller objects and three slots for them, and smaller ones go on bigger ones. (The optimal solution for n pieces is 2^n - 1 moves, which is why I was confused)
I had never heard of this game (and judging from a look around online, I'm far from alone in this). It's a walking simulator/FPS hybrid (far more of the former than the latter, though) involving unraveling the circumstances behind a crime. A lot of it takes place in a decrepit asylum, so it's definitely trying to invoke a thriller/horror vibe (even if it isn't actually particularly scary). I thought it had quite a good story, helped immensely by excellent voice acting. If you want to see the entire story, you'll need to use a guide.
23. Rebel Galaxy (PS4) - 35 hours - Platinum
About 3 hours into this, I thought the story seemed familiar. Checking, I saw that, sure enough, I had played it on Steam six years ago. A decent enough spaceship game, but not really special in any way.
Part one was more of the same, just turned up to 11. Big arena fights, dying if you don't constantly move, however the marauders were honestly easier this time around. Or they were the same and the rest of the game was harder.
Part two was easily the best 4 hours of shooting I have played in years. Better than part one. Better than Eternal. On par with or just slightly better than Doom 2016. It was that good.
24. My Time at Portia (PS4) - 67 hours - Platinum + post-endgame story missions
Kind of a mix of the Atelier games and Harvest Moon/Stardew Valley. It didn't grab me like any of those games have, though it was perfectly fine for what it was. Oddly, the game gives you a trophy for completing the story a fair amount of time before you actually do so.
25. Arcania: The Complete Tale (PS4) - 39 hours - Platinum
This is Arcania (aka Gothic 4) and its expansion. Normally I enjoy Eurojank games, but this was pretty bland and generic in every respect. I also had a strange bug where the game didn't play any cutscenes. Looking around, this bug apparently affects multiple platforms so really seems like the kind of thing that would have been fixed. I ended up watching them on YouTube as I played.
10) Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (Wii) - 35 hours (way more counting restarts)
Sequel to Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. I think the story was worse and I didn't like how disjointed it was, swapping between like 3 or 4 different groups of soldiers. The gameplay was a step up, though, I think. Honestly, I probably would've been happier with the story if they didn't have you fight for the explicitly racist side. Like, the characters on that side multiple times were like "yeah, this is racist and fucked up, but I love my country sooooooo much, so whatever." Also, ended up using a gamecube controller for it. I don't know if I just don't like the wiimote at all or if it was just an especially bad fit for this game, but it was 100% not a comfortable way to play this game.
Looter shooter. Just in case you have not played enough Destiny, Anthem, Marvel, etc.
Honestly, it's not bad. It functions as a single player game and allows the player to adjust the difficulty at any time, I managed not to do this, hitting world tier 10, until the last guy. Long ass two stage boss fight with no checkpoint is no fun at all so I made it significantly easier.
Honestly, I probably would've been happier with the story if they didn't have you fight for the explicitly racist side. Like, the characters on that side multiple times were like "yeah, this is racist and fucked up, but I love my country sooooooo much, so whatever."
I don't know how applicable this is to the story in that game, but postwar Japanese culture has developed a kind of twisted view that civilian (government) control of the military is all-important and that any pushback by military officers against government policy, no matter how wrong it is, is unthinkable.
There are many occasions in the Trails series where officers say things along the lines of "This is terrible, but I'm a military officer and my job is to obey."
I liked it quite a bit. Like, the criticisms people had of the game do hold true. I did want more party interaction than I got and the structure was pretty repetitive. But despite those flaws, I still had a good time with it. The repetitive structure was actually kind of nice after awhile. It meant that I knew roughly how long a chapter was going to be and could knock one out after work and feel like I completed a solid chunk while still having time to do other things in the evening. The graphics were fantastic, I love the whole tiltshift thing they did, the pixelwork they did was really good, too. A lot of the particle and spell effects were really flashy and made a nice crisp contrast to everything else being pixelated. The soundtrack was superb throughout. Not quite a Nobuo Uematsu soundtrack, but still above average fare, with some interesting instrument choices and solid melodies. I did cheat a bit midway through the final chapters for everyone because one boss completely shut me down and I wasn't gonna be able to get past it without doing a bunch of grinding for some other characters. Other than that, I played it normally. The combat system was actually a lot of fun, which is unusual for me when it comes to turn based JRPGs. The battle point system, in conjunction with the weakness system, added a ton of strategy, making you decide when you want to spend BP. Sometimes I was on the ropes and needed to spend it hitting the enemy's weakness to make them vulnerable. Most of the time, I'd whittle down their weakness with normal attacks and spells and then use the BP to unload on them when they were vulnerable. One of the cooler aspects of the BP system was how you could spend it on boosting heals or extending buff/debuff duration. The whole discovery process and presentation of the weakness below each enemy was really smart, too. When encountering a new enemy, you could hazard a guess as to what they're weak to based on other enemies encountered. For example, most flying enemies were vulnerable to bows, so that was a decent bet. Or if an enemy was element aspected, the opposite element was usually a weakness. And then you could decide if you wanna take a risk on a non-weakness hitting attack or use analyze to reveal a weakness.
All in all, I found it to be a pretty solid JRPG and I'm glad I spent the time on it. Not sure what I'll finish next. I started up Fire Emblem Awakening and it seems pretty cool so far. Started up Umarangi Generation and it's rad. Pretty short, too, so it'll probably end up being the next game I post about. Started up Ghostrunner, too, but it might end up being too hard for me to actually finish. Also might just start up something else entirely, who knows.
Hot dang, what a neat game. I'll probably go back and poke around in it some more later. For those not in the know, it's a photography game, with some pretty good level of control without being overwhelming. The entire thing is told through environmental storytelling as you go around the levels looking at everything and taking photographs that strike your fancy. Every level also has a list of things you need to take pictures of before you can progress (and unlock a new piece of gear), as well as some bonus objectives that unlock a new piece of gear if you complete all of them during a run of a level. The art style for the game is great and really helps motivate you to want to take pictures of stuff. Anyway, it's like $12 or something, go get it and play it, it's fantastic.
2D action game that is much better than the sum of its parts. Moves are limited to the usual light attack, heavy attack, block, parry, etc, but they can be linked together very freely. There are also additional magical attacks that I thought were superfluous right up bosses got hard. A little gem.
23. Rain on Your Parade (XBX)
Another physics based, very cute, indy. Better than Donut County but still not as good as Kartamary Damacy.
Incoming info dump… Between some great free PSplus offerings and grabbing a month of PSnow for 1$, I had a busy 2 months of being spoiled for choices.
10 - Control (16 hrs Plat)
I was really impressed with Control. Like the X-files and Half-life had a telekinetic baby. I dug how they took supernatural occurrences and worked them into real world events, and the cool array of powers and how you acquire them all felt slick. Randomly reminded me of Psi-Ops. ‘Member Psi-Ops?
There were also some effects in there Id never seen in a game before. I got the feeling it was pushing my PS4pro to its limits sometimes, especially after unpausing the game. The spooky soundtrack did start to grate on me… There's like a high pitched metallic screeching that seems to come up way too often.
11 - Concrete Genie (8hrs)
Cute and colorful offering on PSPlus that I had my eye on. Play as a generic teen art boi creating your own graffiti monster friends and sticking it those bullies! And maybe we all learn something about ourselves along the way, awwww.
12 -PSnow gauntlet (A bunch of games I spent an a few hours with, but not enough for thier own entry.)
Avengers, Tokyo Jungle, Magus, Golden Axe, Altered Beast, Assault Suit Leynos, 40k Inquisitor, Oblivion, Neurovoider, Gianna Sisters, Many Atari games.
13 - Superhot (8Hrs)
It’s the most innovative shooter Ive played in years (wink, wink). Great gameplay and aesthetic. Possibly a primo way to introduce newcomers to the FPS genre, as its only as fast paced as your movements.
14 - Observation (12hrs)
Intergalactic, Data entry. I appreciated that this love letter to 2001 and HAL didn’t rely on jump scares when it easily could have. Playing as a space station OS is a unique idea, and the mystery you unravel was compelling, really carried by the voice actors. The controls took some getting used to, but the clunkiness can be forgiven.
15 -11-11 Memories Retold (8hrs)
Its got a painterly style, interweaving stories of a young Canadian and a German father of two during WW1, voiced by Elijah Wood and Sebastian Koch respectively. Narrative driven with lots of little collectibles. They are surprisingly hard to spot, as the brush strokes that make up the world sort of blend in with all the little spinning notes you can acquire. Kinda hammy story, it was alright.
16 - Everyone’s gone to the Rapture (8hrs)
Wait, did I just solve the mystery? Should I keep playing?
Maybe my favorite of the walking sims Ive recently played. Slooowly making your way around a small suddenly abandoned English town, eavesdropping on important moments in community members lives. Some of the conversations I found quite moving, especially when you stumble across essentially someone’s last words before The Thing occurs. Subtitles required.
17- Little Nightmares (6hrs)
Creepy little stealthy platformer, gave me dark Fraggle rock vibes in some spots. However its not 2D, yet has a mostly fixed camera, so I found some of the areas resulted in cheap deaths. Was still worth the play through.
18 - Ace Combat 7 (16hrs)
Drones! What are drones doing here, planes should be flown by people dammit!
Been a while since I finished an Ace combat. Cheesy dialogue, silly names, incomprehensible plot, near infinite ammo… It hasn’t changed a bit.
These first 7 games were all either ps+ or purchased by me.
1) Vampyr- platinum trophy. Enjoyed the story, setting, and voice acting but the controls were a little off.
2) Sonic Forces- platinum trophy. Fuck this game and it's garbage controls
3) Othercide - Platinum trophy. Very neat and gorgeously animated tactical RPG. I really enjoyed the difficulty.
4) Concrete Genie - Platinum trophy. Cute little game with a decent family friendly message.
5) Dragonball Xenoverse 2 - Platinum trophy. The grind was toned down considerably from the first game but they also didn't really come up with anything new for the story. Skip it if you played the first one.
6) Rainbow Moon - platinum trophy. A remaster of a ps3 RPG with the sharpest difficulty spike for the final boss I have ever witnessed in over 20 years of video games.
7) Remnant: From the ashes- Platinum trophy. A sort of dark souls esque 3rd person shooter with co-op. It was fun but two of the trophies were completely rng which soured the game for me a bit.
Around the time I finished rainbow Moon Sony had a sale for PSNow, their version of gamepass, for $1. So the next 10 games were all from that.
8) Clockwork Tales: of glass and ink - platinum trophy. Neat point and click style adventure game
9) Adam's Venture Origins- platinum trophy. Poor man's uncharted but not without charm.
10) My Time at Portia- platinum trophy. Stardew valley knockoff that was decent enough in it's own right.
11) Skyscrapers - platinum trophy
12) Goosebumps: the game- platinum trophy. Point and click but pretty charming if you have fond memories from the show/books.
13) Enigmatis: The Ghost of Maple Creek- platinum trophy. Going to be honest I just skipped all the dialog for this one. It was my third point and click in almost as many days and I was feeling a bit burnt out.
14) Gravity Rush: Remastered- platinum trophy. This was surprisingly fun and the movement system was very cool. Combat on the other hand was not well done and the story made damn near no sense.
15) Black Mirror- platinum trophy. Third person point and click basically. The story was weird, the gameplay was weird, just the whole thing was weird.
16)11-11: Memories Retold- platinum trophy. Like someone else mentioned earlier this one is a very pretty art style wrapped around a walking simulator. This is the first game I ever felt a little off trying to get all the trophies for because of how serious the subject matter was.
17) MediEvil- platinum trophy. This was ok. I don't really have fond memories of it on the ps1 but Sony doesn't really have a deep catalogue of first party titles they can dig into to remaster so why not.
And that brings me up to date. Not sure if I can manage to get 52 games since I usually go after platinum trophies and all but the simplest games require at least a weeks worth of time investment but I will try. Should be good for my backlog at least.
Absolutely fantastic game! Probably the best CRPG I've ever played. The writing is phenomenal from top to bottom and the voice acting is sublime. Especially considering just how many characters and "skills" are voiced, they did an incredible job. So much of the art in this game is gorgeous as well, especially the skill portraits. And man, what an absolutely compelling setting, too. Anyway, this is a game everyone should play, go do it. No excuse now that it's on consoles, too. Thanks again @Blackhawk1313 for gifting it to me back when it came out! I started it but fell off of it back then and this Final Cut version finally got me to play through it
Real highs and lows with this one. When the combat clicks it's really fun and I love the mod system and the flexibility it gives you. Buggy launch and some really dumb difficulty scaling decisions that pushes you to drop it to the easiest difficulty as soon as you die once and then crank it back up after you beat that encounter. I bought it but I'd definitely wait for a sale/game pass it.
6.5 Final Fantasy 12: The Zodiac Age (Xbox Gamepass) 60 hours on 2x speed -
It's not the worst Final Fantasy I've played (looking at you launch FF15) but almost nothing about it clicked with me. Story is disjointed and never gave me much to care about any of the characters. Mad props for trying something like Gambits though, they ended up being both too restrictive and too open ended in really irritating ways for me but I appreciate how much of a change they were from older battle systems.
Fun little mischief sim in the vein of Goose Game. A bunch of short little levels with different themes and homages, every thing from frogger to Counter Strike to Zelda to Katmari and a ton more. None of them overstay their welcome (maybe the tower defense level) and they do a good job of switching up the feel of each level. I'm not sure if they were doing a bit with the frame story
it started as a parent talking to their kid about divorce and the other parent moving on and ended with a grandfather like the Princess Bride
But I thought it started really interesting and whoofed by the end.
All in all a fun couple hours and I enjoyed it enough that I'm keeping it installed to poke at the NG+ stuff.
After a miserable few days with a to be un-named recent PS5 sci-fi roguelike (that I never want play, look at or even think about EVER AGAIN) I needed a little gaming chicken soup. Cue Timespinner, a reasonable Metroidvania that does nothing new but plays all the hits and is fun enough to sing along to.
+3
Options
Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
Capcom proves that 7 plus 4 equals 8. This is not a bad thing. Village was a schlocky, gooey good time that was just as long as it needed to be. I do think that 7 was better, but that may just be because of how novel first person Resident Evil was at the time.
Pixel art side scrolling action game. Very stylized, in other words, this pixel art game has big ass pixels. But somehow has incredible animations. Good stuff.
Dead Space 1-3
Mafia
Just Cause 4
What Remains of Edith Finch
Splinter Cell: Blacklist
Subnautica
Dishonored 2
Control
RE8
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
Subnautica: Below Zero
Finished a few more
Mass Effect 3 should be next. Got sidetracked with the trilogy when I got a new monitor and went back to S:BZ
26. Vikings: Wolves of Midgard (PS4) - 80 hours - Platinum
Underrated Diablo-clone with Vikings. I say "underrated" not because the game is great (it's not) but because everything I heard going in was overwhelmingly negative when the game seemed like a perfectly fine entry into the genre to me. I think a lot of the dislike came because its campaign is relatively short, single-player focused, and not really meant to replayed.
27. God of War: Ghost of Sparta (PS3) - 15 hours - Platinum
It's another God of War game. I only played this for completion's sake and to trim down my PS3 backlog. I've now finished every game in the series.
28. Tales of Vesperia (PS3) - 175 hours - Platinum
The first game in the Tales series I've played in 20 years. I ended up quite enjoying it, but boy were the first 20-30 hours a drag. I never *really* felt like I got a good grasp on the combat but thankfully the game wasn't difficult enough that that really mattered.
29. Doom (2016) (PS4) - 60 hours - 100%
This game was a lot of fun, recapturing some of the feel of old-school shooters. Getting all the multiplayer trophies meant having to play a lot of multiplayer though, and I was pretty ready to move on by the end.
I feel a little guilty about not enjoying this more. Which is not to say that I disliked it - there were times I got quite into it. But it's a very good game that I felt was a little wasted on me.
31. Demon's Tier+ (PS4) - 5 hours - Platinum
Kind of a combination of the dev's earlier games Xenon Valkyrie+ and Riddled Corpses EX (both of which I liked). A fantasy-themed twin-stick shooter where you run around procedurally generated dungeons. I hesitate to call it a roguelite because there isn't that much randomness and you don't die much. I thought it was a lot of fun, but it was also a lot shorter than I was expecting.
32. Just Cause 2 (PS3) - 60 hours - Platinum
I'd played this years ago on PC but also bought it in a PS3 sale years ago. I remembered it being the best in the series so looked forward to going back to it. But it didn't really seem all that different than 3 (other than being more stable) and I kind of missed having the wingsuit. So I dunno, maybe it was just a case of rose-colored glasses.
33. Control (PS5) - 40 hours - Platinum + DLCs
Really liked it (even if the combat was pretty shallow). Here's hoping there's a single-player follow up.
34. The Surge (PS4) - 42 hours - Platinum + DLCs
Fun SF soulslike, definitely better than their previous title, Lords of the Fallen. The story was a little generic, but the atmosphere and game play was nice and the difficulty level was fairly lower for this type of game.
Had a couple games where I sunk a bunch of time but decided I didn't want to put up with it's issues anymore, cough cough Dragon Quest Builders 2 cough cough.
8.5 Forager (Xbox Gamepass) - 37 hours -
Janky indie game that has its moments and also has its moments. A little too much idle game in it's DNA for my tastes but I think I pulled out 20ish hours of fun from it. The extra 17 was me beating my head against bugs trying to finish out all the cheevos, including a memory leak that I thought was just poor optimization until I was like 33 hours in.
I had been keeping an eye on this one for a while as it looked like a good metroidvania but it its description was suspect. Finally noticed that there was a demo on the Xbox so I played it long enough to figure out that the death penalty is no worse than Hollow Knight and that is a very good, if very linear, action game.
32. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart (PS5)
Without exaggeration, this is the best looking game I have ever played. Story and gameplay wise it is not as good as the Future games on PS3 but it does prove that the next gen consoles can actually do things that the old ones cannot.
33. Scarlet Nexus (XBX)
Reminds me of Astral Chain, another anime style brawler that no one played. The story is incomprehensible thanks to liberal time fuckery but killing the monsters is fun enough for one play through.
Dead Space 1-3
Mafia
Just Cause 4
What Remains of Edith Finch
Splinter Cell: Blacklist
Subnautica
Dishonored 2
Control
RE8
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2 Mass Effect 3
Subnautica: Below Zero Plague Tale: Innocence
Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault
Posts
If you feel that they count, they count.
Personally, I've been counting DLCs as long as they're least a few hours long. (and I've been combining DLCs from the same game together).
Not sure that I've ever played a crpg before this. Loved the world building and how contained the base story was. Controls were a little funky on console and it definitely felt like a Kickstarter game. I think it suffered (for me) from some of that DA:I problems of lots of content that you're not expected to do every playthrough since that's not how I play games. I'm gonna do everything I can and I'm only ever playing it once. The sequel is on Gamepass so I'm looking forward to seeing how they iterated on it but I'm gonna need a break in between.
3.5 Division 2: Warlords of New York (Xbox) - 15 ish hours
It's more Division, for all the good and bad that that entails. Like the other entries the good bits are all in the side stories while the campaign is meh. Controls are still as tight as ever.
Just finished Dishonored 2. Roughly 12 hours.
Really good game. Started a new game + but think I need something new before I go back to it.
Played through a full campaign starting as the Persian minor power of Atropatene and ending as the Empire of Persia. There was a big patch since the last time I played Imperator and the experience was, different, not really better or worse honestly. I think the game is pretty decent as far as Paradox's grand strategy games go but not their best offering. Still, I had a pretty good time and if you like strategy and the roman time period I'd suggest picking it up if it's on sale for $30 or so.
Good little puzzle game. No section ever overstays it's welcome, the puzzles are generally quick and simple, it does a nice mix of flipping between more actiony puzzles and figure out how to get into this room kinds.
It did have one terrible Towers of Hanoi iteration but enough button mashing got me through, and although I didn't find this out until I had already beat it apparently it's initial configuration is static and can be beat in 4 moves.
The prologue dialog is also not good. Definitely written for the player and doesn't respect what your character would already have known. Cleans up once you got past it though.
I think it's leaving Gamepass in like 5 days.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
I had never heard of this game (and judging from a look around online, I'm far from alone in this). It's a walking simulator/FPS hybrid (far more of the former than the latter, though) involving unraveling the circumstances behind a crime. A lot of it takes place in a decrepit asylum, so it's definitely trying to invoke a thriller/horror vibe (even if it isn't actually particularly scary). I thought it had quite a good story, helped immensely by excellent voice acting. If you want to see the entire story, you'll need to use a guide.
23. Rebel Galaxy (PS4) - 35 hours - Platinum
About 3 hours into this, I thought the story seemed familiar. Checking, I saw that, sure enough, I had played it on Steam six years ago. A decent enough spaceship game, but not really special in any way.
Finished main story of Control. That was a ride.
Will get to the DLC and add them as their own entry I think.
Part one was more of the same, just turned up to 11. Big arena fights, dying if you don't constantly move, however the marauders were honestly easier this time around. Or they were the same and the rest of the game was harder.
Part two was easily the best 4 hours of shooting I have played in years. Better than part one. Better than Eternal. On par with or just slightly better than Doom 2016. It was that good.
Kind of a mix of the Atelier games and Harvest Moon/Stardew Valley. It didn't grab me like any of those games have, though it was perfectly fine for what it was. Oddly, the game gives you a trophy for completing the story a fair amount of time before you actually do so.
25. Arcania: The Complete Tale (PS4) - 39 hours - Platinum
This is Arcania (aka Gothic 4) and its expansion. Normally I enjoy Eurojank games, but this was pretty bland and generic in every respect. I also had a strange bug where the game didn't play any cutscenes. Looking around, this bug apparently affects multiple platforms so really seems like the kind of thing that would have been fixed. I ended up watching them on YouTube as I played.
Sequel to Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. I think the story was worse and I didn't like how disjointed it was, swapping between like 3 or 4 different groups of soldiers. The gameplay was a step up, though, I think. Honestly, I probably would've been happier with the story if they didn't have you fight for the explicitly racist side. Like, the characters on that side multiple times were like "yeah, this is racist and fucked up, but I love my country sooooooo much, so whatever." Also, ended up using a gamecube controller for it. I don't know if I just don't like the wiimote at all or if it was just an especially bad fit for this game, but it was 100% not a comfortable way to play this game.
Looter shooter. Just in case you have not played enough Destiny, Anthem, Marvel, etc.
Honestly, it's not bad. It functions as a single player game and allows the player to adjust the difficulty at any time, I managed not to do this, hitting world tier 10, until the last guy. Long ass two stage boss fight with no checkpoint is no fun at all so I made it significantly easier.
I don't know how applicable this is to the story in that game, but postwar Japanese culture has developed a kind of twisted view that civilian (government) control of the military is all-important and that any pushback by military officers against government policy, no matter how wrong it is, is unthinkable.
There are many occasions in the Trails series where officers say things along the lines of "This is terrible, but I'm a military officer and my job is to obey."
I liked it quite a bit. Like, the criticisms people had of the game do hold true. I did want more party interaction than I got and the structure was pretty repetitive. But despite those flaws, I still had a good time with it. The repetitive structure was actually kind of nice after awhile. It meant that I knew roughly how long a chapter was going to be and could knock one out after work and feel like I completed a solid chunk while still having time to do other things in the evening. The graphics were fantastic, I love the whole tiltshift thing they did, the pixelwork they did was really good, too. A lot of the particle and spell effects were really flashy and made a nice crisp contrast to everything else being pixelated. The soundtrack was superb throughout. Not quite a Nobuo Uematsu soundtrack, but still above average fare, with some interesting instrument choices and solid melodies. I did cheat a bit midway through the final chapters for everyone because one boss completely shut me down and I wasn't gonna be able to get past it without doing a bunch of grinding for some other characters. Other than that, I played it normally. The combat system was actually a lot of fun, which is unusual for me when it comes to turn based JRPGs. The battle point system, in conjunction with the weakness system, added a ton of strategy, making you decide when you want to spend BP. Sometimes I was on the ropes and needed to spend it hitting the enemy's weakness to make them vulnerable. Most of the time, I'd whittle down their weakness with normal attacks and spells and then use the BP to unload on them when they were vulnerable. One of the cooler aspects of the BP system was how you could spend it on boosting heals or extending buff/debuff duration. The whole discovery process and presentation of the weakness below each enemy was really smart, too. When encountering a new enemy, you could hazard a guess as to what they're weak to based on other enemies encountered. For example, most flying enemies were vulnerable to bows, so that was a decent bet. Or if an enemy was element aspected, the opposite element was usually a weakness. And then you could decide if you wanna take a risk on a non-weakness hitting attack or use analyze to reveal a weakness.
All in all, I found it to be a pretty solid JRPG and I'm glad I spent the time on it. Not sure what I'll finish next. I started up Fire Emblem Awakening and it seems pretty cool so far. Started up Umarangi Generation and it's rad. Pretty short, too, so it'll probably end up being the next game I post about. Started up Ghostrunner, too, but it might end up being too hard for me to actually finish. Also might just start up something else entirely, who knows.
Hot dang, what a neat game. I'll probably go back and poke around in it some more later. For those not in the know, it's a photography game, with some pretty good level of control without being overwhelming. The entire thing is told through environmental storytelling as you go around the levels looking at everything and taking photographs that strike your fancy. Every level also has a list of things you need to take pictures of before you can progress (and unlock a new piece of gear), as well as some bonus objectives that unlock a new piece of gear if you complete all of them during a run of a level. The art style for the game is great and really helps motivate you to want to take pictures of stuff. Anyway, it's like $12 or something, go get it and play it, it's fantastic.
2D action game that is much better than the sum of its parts. Moves are limited to the usual light attack, heavy attack, block, parry, etc, but they can be linked together very freely. There are also additional magical attacks that I thought were superfluous right up bosses got hard. A little gem.
23. Rain on Your Parade (XBX)
Another physics based, very cute, indy. Better than Donut County but still not as good as Kartamary Damacy.
10 - Control (16 hrs Plat)
I was really impressed with Control. Like the X-files and Half-life had a telekinetic baby. I dug how they took supernatural occurrences and worked them into real world events, and the cool array of powers and how you acquire them all felt slick. Randomly reminded me of Psi-Ops. ‘Member Psi-Ops?
There were also some effects in there Id never seen in a game before. I got the feeling it was pushing my PS4pro to its limits sometimes, especially after unpausing the game. The spooky soundtrack did start to grate on me… There's like a high pitched metallic screeching that seems to come up way too often.
11 - Concrete Genie (8hrs)
Cute and colorful offering on PSPlus that I had my eye on. Play as a generic teen art boi creating your own graffiti monster friends and sticking it those bullies! And maybe we all learn something about ourselves along the way, awwww.
12 -PSnow gauntlet (A bunch of games I spent an a few hours with, but not enough for thier own entry.)
Avengers, Tokyo Jungle, Magus, Golden Axe, Altered Beast, Assault Suit Leynos, 40k Inquisitor, Oblivion, Neurovoider, Gianna Sisters, Many Atari games.
13 - Superhot (8Hrs)
It’s the most innovative shooter Ive played in years (wink, wink). Great gameplay and aesthetic. Possibly a primo way to introduce newcomers to the FPS genre, as its only as fast paced as your movements.
14 - Observation (12hrs)
Intergalactic, Data entry. I appreciated that this love letter to 2001 and HAL didn’t rely on jump scares when it easily could have. Playing as a space station OS is a unique idea, and the mystery you unravel was compelling, really carried by the voice actors. The controls took some getting used to, but the clunkiness can be forgiven.
15 -11-11 Memories Retold (8hrs)
Its got a painterly style, interweaving stories of a young Canadian and a German father of two during WW1, voiced by Elijah Wood and Sebastian Koch respectively. Narrative driven with lots of little collectibles. They are surprisingly hard to spot, as the brush strokes that make up the world sort of blend in with all the little spinning notes you can acquire. Kinda hammy story, it was alright.
16 - Everyone’s gone to the Rapture (8hrs)
Wait, did I just solve the mystery? Should I keep playing?
Maybe my favorite of the walking sims Ive recently played. Slooowly making your way around a small suddenly abandoned English town, eavesdropping on important moments in community members lives. Some of the conversations I found quite moving, especially when you stumble across essentially someone’s last words before The Thing occurs. Subtitles required.
17- Little Nightmares (6hrs)
Creepy little stealthy platformer, gave me dark Fraggle rock vibes in some spots. However its not 2D, yet has a mostly fixed camera, so I found some of the areas resulted in cheap deaths. Was still worth the play through.
18 - Ace Combat 7 (16hrs)
Drones! What are drones doing here, planes should be flown by people dammit!
Been a while since I finished an Ace combat. Cheesy dialogue, silly names, incomprehensible plot, near infinite ammo… It hasn’t changed a bit.
I blame the subwoofer.
Part of the Crash Trilogy remake. Some games age well and some games should be left in the past. This was definitely the latter.
1) Vampyr- platinum trophy. Enjoyed the story, setting, and voice acting but the controls were a little off.
2) Sonic Forces- platinum trophy. Fuck this game and it's garbage controls
3) Othercide - Platinum trophy. Very neat and gorgeously animated tactical RPG. I really enjoyed the difficulty.
4) Concrete Genie - Platinum trophy. Cute little game with a decent family friendly message.
5) Dragonball Xenoverse 2 - Platinum trophy. The grind was toned down considerably from the first game but they also didn't really come up with anything new for the story. Skip it if you played the first one.
6) Rainbow Moon - platinum trophy. A remaster of a ps3 RPG with the sharpest difficulty spike for the final boss I have ever witnessed in over 20 years of video games.
7) Remnant: From the ashes- Platinum trophy. A sort of dark souls esque 3rd person shooter with co-op. It was fun but two of the trophies were completely rng which soured the game for me a bit.
Around the time I finished rainbow Moon Sony had a sale for PSNow, their version of gamepass, for $1. So the next 10 games were all from that.
8) Clockwork Tales: of glass and ink - platinum trophy. Neat point and click style adventure game
9) Adam's Venture Origins- platinum trophy. Poor man's uncharted but not without charm.
10) My Time at Portia- platinum trophy. Stardew valley knockoff that was decent enough in it's own right.
11) Skyscrapers - platinum trophy
12) Goosebumps: the game- platinum trophy. Point and click but pretty charming if you have fond memories from the show/books.
13) Enigmatis: The Ghost of Maple Creek- platinum trophy. Going to be honest I just skipped all the dialog for this one. It was my third point and click in almost as many days and I was feeling a bit burnt out.
14) Gravity Rush: Remastered- platinum trophy. This was surprisingly fun and the movement system was very cool. Combat on the other hand was not well done and the story made damn near no sense.
15) Black Mirror- platinum trophy. Third person point and click basically. The story was weird, the gameplay was weird, just the whole thing was weird.
16)11-11: Memories Retold- platinum trophy. Like someone else mentioned earlier this one is a very pretty art style wrapped around a walking simulator. This is the first game I ever felt a little off trying to get all the trophies for because of how serious the subject matter was.
17) MediEvil- platinum trophy. This was ok. I don't really have fond memories of it on the ps1 but Sony doesn't really have a deep catalogue of first party titles they can dig into to remaster so why not.
And that brings me up to date. Not sure if I can manage to get 52 games since I usually go after platinum trophies and all but the simplest games require at least a weeks worth of time investment but I will try. Should be good for my backlog at least.
PSN:Furlion
Absolutely fantastic game! Probably the best CRPG I've ever played. The writing is phenomenal from top to bottom and the voice acting is sublime. Especially considering just how many characters and "skills" are voiced, they did an incredible job. So much of the art in this game is gorgeous as well, especially the skill portraits. And man, what an absolutely compelling setting, too. Anyway, this is a game everyone should play, go do it. No excuse now that it's on consoles, too. Thanks again @Blackhawk1313 for gifting it to me back when it came out! I started it but fell off of it back then and this Final Cut version finally got me to play through it
R-Type is hard. It has always been hard. But this iteration is either absurdly difficult or I am getting old.
...hey, shut up.
Real highs and lows with this one. When the combat clicks it's really fun and I love the mod system and the flexibility it gives you. Buggy launch and some really dumb difficulty scaling decisions that pushes you to drop it to the easiest difficulty as soon as you die once and then crank it back up after you beat that encounter. I bought it but I'd definitely wait for a sale/game pass it.
6.5 Final Fantasy 12: The Zodiac Age (Xbox Gamepass) 60 hours on 2x speed -
It's not the worst Final Fantasy I've played (looking at you launch FF15) but almost nothing about it clicked with me. Story is disjointed and never gave me much to care about any of the characters. Mad props for trying something like Gambits though, they ended up being both too restrictive and too open ended in really irritating ways for me but I appreciate how much of a change they were from older battle systems.
Fun little mischief sim in the vein of Goose Game. A bunch of short little levels with different themes and homages, every thing from frogger to Counter Strike to Zelda to Katmari and a ton more. None of them overstay their welcome (maybe the tower defense level) and they do a good job of switching up the feel of each level. I'm not sure if they were doing a bit with the frame story
But I thought it started really interesting and whoofed by the end.
All in all a fun couple hours and I enjoyed it enough that I'm keeping it installed to poke at the NG+ stuff.
After a miserable few days with a to be un-named recent PS5 sci-fi roguelike (that I never want play, look at or even think about EVER AGAIN) I needed a little gaming chicken soup. Cue Timespinner, a reasonable Metroidvania that does nothing new but plays all the hits and is fun enough to sing along to.
Yeah, it's Raiden 4 again with remixed music.
28. Resident Evil Village (XBX)
Capcom proves that 7 plus 4 equals 8. This is not a bad thing. Village was a schlocky, gooey good time that was just as long as it needed to be. I do think that 7 was better, but that may just be because of how novel first person Resident Evil was at the time.
29. Olija (XBX)
Pixel art side scrolling action game. Very stylized, in other words, this pixel art game has big ass pixels. But somehow has incredible animations. Good stuff.
Finished a few more
Mass Effect 3 should be next. Got sidetracked with the trilogy when I got a new monitor and went back to S:BZ
26. Vikings: Wolves of Midgard (PS4) - 80 hours - Platinum
Underrated Diablo-clone with Vikings. I say "underrated" not because the game is great (it's not) but because everything I heard going in was overwhelmingly negative when the game seemed like a perfectly fine entry into the genre to me. I think a lot of the dislike came because its campaign is relatively short, single-player focused, and not really meant to replayed.
27. God of War: Ghost of Sparta (PS3) - 15 hours - Platinum
It's another God of War game. I only played this for completion's sake and to trim down my PS3 backlog. I've now finished every game in the series.
28. Tales of Vesperia (PS3) - 175 hours - Platinum
The first game in the Tales series I've played in 20 years. I ended up quite enjoying it, but boy were the first 20-30 hours a drag. I never *really* felt like I got a good grasp on the combat but thankfully the game wasn't difficult enough that that really mattered.
29. Doom (2016) (PS4) - 60 hours - 100%
This game was a lot of fun, recapturing some of the feel of old-school shooters. Getting all the multiplayer trophies meant having to play a lot of multiplayer though, and I was pretty ready to move on by the end.
Since Ubisoft has decided to not make any more 2D Rayman games someone else had to. This is not as good as Rayman Legends but it is still very good.
30. Subnautica (PS5) - 25 hours - Platinum
I feel a little guilty about not enjoying this more. Which is not to say that I disliked it - there were times I got quite into it. But it's a very good game that I felt was a little wasted on me.
31. Demon's Tier+ (PS4) - 5 hours - Platinum
Kind of a combination of the dev's earlier games Xenon Valkyrie+ and Riddled Corpses EX (both of which I liked). A fantasy-themed twin-stick shooter where you run around procedurally generated dungeons. I hesitate to call it a roguelite because there isn't that much randomness and you don't die much. I thought it was a lot of fun, but it was also a lot shorter than I was expecting.
32. Just Cause 2 (PS3) - 60 hours - Platinum
I'd played this years ago on PC but also bought it in a PS3 sale years ago. I remembered it being the best in the series so looked forward to going back to it. But it didn't really seem all that different than 3 (other than being more stable) and I kind of missed having the wingsuit. So I dunno, maybe it was just a case of rose-colored glasses.
33. Control (PS5) - 40 hours - Platinum + DLCs
Really liked it (even if the combat was pretty shallow). Here's hoping there's a single-player follow up.
34. The Surge (PS4) - 42 hours - Platinum + DLCs
Fun SF soulslike, definitely better than their previous title, Lords of the Fallen. The story was a little generic, but the atmosphere and game play was nice and the difficulty level was fairly lower for this type of game.
8.5 Forager (Xbox Gamepass) - 37 hours -
Janky indie game that has its moments and also has its moments. A little too much idle game in it's DNA for my tastes but I think I pulled out 20ish hours of fun from it. The extra 17 was me beating my head against bugs trying to finish out all the cheevos, including a memory leak that I thought was just poor optimization until I was like 33 hours in.
I had been keeping an eye on this one for a while as it looked like a good metroidvania but it its description was suspect. Finally noticed that there was a demo on the Xbox so I played it long enough to figure out that the death penalty is no worse than Hollow Knight and that is a very good, if very linear, action game.
32. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart (PS5)
Without exaggeration, this is the best looking game I have ever played. Story and gameplay wise it is not as good as the Future games on PS3 but it does prove that the next gen consoles can actually do things that the old ones cannot.
33. Scarlet Nexus (XBX)
Reminds me of Astral Chain, another anime style brawler that no one played. The story is incomprehensible thanks to liberal time fuckery but killing the monsters is fun enough for one play through.
3 more down
Doom Eternal may be next