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Post by Null0x00 on Oct 25, 2019 7:14:12 GMT -5
Cleared DUSK for Windows in 6 hours on the Cero Miedo (hard) difficulty. First time playthrough. 6/10. I was pretty disappointed by this game. It gets so much right with the low-fi horror aesthetic and the quality shooting that Quake and Blood had, but then the niggling flaws just keep pilling up and up to make the whole experience just progressively more annoying. The player movement on the whole feels too slippery. Enemies will just randomly spawn in sight frequently, instead of having them actually come from somewhere that makes sense (to be fair, Quake is also guilty of this). The wall grapple mechanics on certain levels stops working if you look upwards at certain angles for no real reason. There are multiple levels set in the dark with your flashlight broken that just completely drag, levels set in caves/mines that have really tight corridors with no space to dodge, monster arenas where there are tonnes of things to get stuck on, a boss arena where its far too easy to fall off and die, and a shitty gravity puzzle near the end of the game that just felt like an unneeded gimmick level. Also, the final gauntlet against a near unending swarm of enemies with no cover at all just felt like a really bad version of Serious Sam that anything resembling Quake or Blood. Quake was hard, but it was always fun and never felt frustrating like DUSK can feel at times. Also, Andrew Hulshult just isn't in the same league as Trent Reznor in terms of atmospheric music. The Stephan Weyte voice cameo was deeply appreciated, however.
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Post by Digitalnametag on Oct 25, 2019 17:07:32 GMT -5
Valkyrie Profile PS1 Replay 23 hours
Yup still my favorite PS1 game. So much to love about in this game. The battle system, the dungeons, the theme, the artwork, and the music are all phenomenal. The voice acting can be a bit cringy but for the most part I really like that too! Yeah getting the 'A' ending without prior knowledge is pretty much impossible but otherwise the game is near perfect. Indivisible was fun but VP is still so much better.
I got the 'A' ending on 'Hard' mode (which I kinda have memorized after several plays over the years), collected all the flame jewels, and completed every dungeon. With some liberal use of the dimension slip item in the last few chapters. Going to pass on the bonus dungeon Seraphic Gate this time though despite collecting all the jewels. Trails of Cold Steel III beckons.
Almost started VP2 instead of the first one but it takes quite a bit longer to play through. I haven't played it since its release. Maybe after Cold Steel III.
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Oct 26, 2019 5:09:46 GMT -5
^Was wondering about that game, does it have ability gating like metroid or zelda?
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Post by Digitalnametag on Oct 26, 2019 6:01:18 GMT -5
Valkyrie Profile? No you start with all movement abilities. Indivisible does have ability gating though.
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Post by alexmate on Oct 26, 2019 9:58:55 GMT -5
Missed Messages (Steam\PC, 24 minutes (timer), 1st playthrough, all endings) Pretty good text adventure. Very short, but writing is pretty good.
Rating: 7
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Post by dsparil on Oct 28, 2019 9:06:40 GMT -5
Ys Origin (macOS via WINE, First Time)
Going back to finish off the three Ys games I have left that I can actually run. Started with Origin for some reason. It's pretty fun despite being a "dungeon crawler" limited to just Darm Tower. It would have been nice if you could explore a bit of the surrounding area before starting in the tower. I'm a little iffy on having three characters total though. I had contemplated playing all three, but it seems like it'd be pretty repetitive since the actual game is the same between all three. Maybe just having the third as the only character would have been more interesting especially since it's the canonical story anyway. I'll likely save that play through for next year.
I finished in 6:40:34.
Rating: 8
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Post by toei on Oct 28, 2019 15:50:18 GMT -5
dsparil It's definitely repetitive if you play all three in a row, but it does get faster each time. The third character moves extremely fast and is kind of overpowered, but a lot of fun to play as.
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Post by zerker on Oct 28, 2019 17:23:19 GMT -5
Time to catch this thread up on the last couple days. Recently, I went back to look into the DLC for Rise of the Tomb Raider. Two of them don't qualify for various reasons: Baba Yaga: The Temple of the Witch is an interesting questline, but it links in with the main game rather than separately accessed. Since I switched from Windows to Linux, I even needed to replay the first little bit of the game to get here, but not enough to claim the core game. Endurance Mode is cool, but it doesn't seem to have a clear end point so much as "okay, time to evac and record my score". That leaves: Rise of the Tomb Raider: Cold Darkness Awakened (Linux; first time), which is a fairly large stealth-focused scenario against zombies with some non-standard (but ultimately easy enough) puzzles. Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20th Year Celebration Pack (Linux; first time), which contains an interesting story/puzzle driven experience through Croft Manor trying to figure out what happened to your mother. There's also a separate 'Lara's Nightmare' mode where you fight zombies in the same environment, but that doesn't seem to be the focus. If you think I need to beat that too to claim this, I can beat my head against it a few more times. And unrelated, I finished Dimension of the Past (Linux via Quakespasm; first time), which is an episode for Quake 1 by MachineGames. Quality stuff. The map filenames are cheekily labeled as E5M#.
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Post by kaoru on Oct 29, 2019 2:26:53 GMT -5
Def agree on it probably being better to take a break before going through Ys Origin with another character. Maybe skip the second and go right for the third, too. At least I think the Western release lets you do this.
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Post by dsparil on Oct 29, 2019 8:15:59 GMT -5
The western version does unlock the third character after beating it as either of the initial ones. Is it actually worth playing through all three?
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Post by kaoru on Oct 30, 2019 3:23:13 GMT -5
I'd say no, unless you're having so much fun you'd like to play the game thrice. It's just that I played it back before the official Western release and the JP one only unlocks the third character after playing with both initial ones. I mean, it wasn't terrible, Origins is a fine enough game, but given the option, I'd probably skip the second character.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Oct 31, 2019 9:35:50 GMT -5
Final Fantasy (NES, 1st play, 30h)
Interesting game. It's hard not to compare it to Dragon Quest III, since they came out around two months apart. It looks more sophisticated, but it's not, gameplay/system/balancing-wise. I began drawing a map, but they make the exploring so easy by giving you the airship early on that I gave up on that after a while.
Most of the game is really easy, but the final dungeon at least took me three tries, so that was nice. Though to be fair, that was mostly because of enemies that can one-hit kill you, and I got through it really easily the third try.
I dig these kind of old-school RPGs, but it's too bad FF doesn't really live up to its potential. Not only are some things severely bugged (not the least of which are certain spells which simply don't work at all), but certain interesting systems, such as the way the stats work and the magic charge system can't really be fully utilized, I feel. The latter partially stems from the countless items you find that cast spells for free, but also from the lack of thoughtful enemy encounters. Most enemies just attack, occasionally doing an elemental attack that hits all your folks. Attacks that paralyze and poison you are also pretty common. But outside of that, there's barely anything to make enemy encounters stand out from one another.
It's too bad the rereleases since the GBA change the magic system and make the game easier. The magic system is actually very interesting and the game is already very easy, so I don't think they really understood the strenghts/weaknesses of the game very well at Square-Enix. It seems like the PSX version might be the definitive version of the game, then.
Rating: 8.5/10
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Post by dsparil on Nov 1, 2019 7:46:21 GMT -5
Evoland (Switch, First Time) Evoland 2: A Slight Case of Spacetime Continuum Disorder
I played some of the original Evoland and didn't like it at all. Evoland 2 I got pretty close to the end when it originally came out, but never finished it for some reason. I saw that the combined Legendary Edition (which doesn't actually add anything) was on sale for $5 I figured I'd given them a go again.
The first Evoland is pretty awful. It very vaguely has the conceit of moving through RPG history except not really. Basic game elements get added fairly quickly at the beginning with a bunch of mainly graphical changes happening later. The way things get added is very haphazard so there isn't any sense of logical progression. The gameplay is pretty poor too. It oscillates between being a bland and mediocre Zelda clone and a very poor FF clone except for one area that's fairly inexplicably based on Diablo. There's also basically no story. Oddly enough, there's also a Triple Triad clone with collectable cards, but you can only play it against one NPC.
I remember Evoland 2 as being good, but what really happened is that I remembered the few parts that are okay and completely forgot everything terrible about it. There's a real plot this time around unsurprisingly revolving around time travel as the subtitle suggests. It starts out well enough only for the first part to ultimately be pointless with a completely nonsensical second half. The base gameplay is still a Zelda clone, but there's also much less of it. Two of the "dungeon" areas are actually quite good! All the other gameplay is awful though. There're super shallow clones of other games. I can't even decide what's the worst part. The tedious Chrono Trigger area, the horrible vertical shooter level, the shallow and overlong TBS section which bizarrely ends with a terrible Guitar Hero mini-game, the Bejeweled(!) section, the inexplicable brawler level or the needless Bomberman homage. There's probably other stuff I'm missing. It was probably a whole lot of work just to makes a bunch of stuff that was not worth playing at all. It makes the fact there's actually two good areas feel even stranger. It's a hour and a half of good content amid ten hours of mostly garbage.
My last saves were at 1:59:55 and 11:24:14.
Rating: 3 for both
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Post by dsparil on Nov 1, 2019 8:17:01 GMT -5
Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20th Year Celebration Pack (Linux; first time), which contains an interesting story/puzzle driven experience through Croft Manor trying to figure out what happened to your mother. There's also a separate 'Lara's Nightmare' mode where you fight zombies in the same environment, but that doesn't seem to be the focus. If you think I need to beat that too to claim this, I can beat my head against it a few more times. I don't think so. This piece of DLC is also called Blood Ties.
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Post by dsparil on Nov 1, 2019 8:49:31 GMT -5
Here are the current rankings:
Total Game Completions:
dsparil - 139 Snake - 67 toei - 45 hades - 44 zerker - 42 JoeQ - 34 Threads - 33 Null0x00 - 31 Son of Suzy Creamcheese - 31 alexmate - 26 Digitalnametag - 24 ResidentTsundere - 23 foopy64 - 21 Woody Alien - 20 halftheisland - 15 moran - 15 Gamer Griff - 10 X-pert74 - 8 wyldesyde - 6 paperchema - 5 Murphy - 2 nerdybat - 2 spanky - 2 DigitalNameTag - 1 Sac - 1
First Time Game Completions:
dsparil - 106 toei - 43 zerker - 38 hades - 29 Snake - 28 JoeQ - 26 Son of Suzy Creamcheese - 26 alexmate - 25 Null0x00 - 24 Woody Alien - 18 Digitalnametag - 17 foopy64 - 17 ResidentTsundere - 17 Threads - 16 halftheisland - 14 Gamer Griff - 8 moran - 8 X-pert74 - 8 paperchema - 4 wyldesyde - 4 Murphy - 2 nerdybat - 2 spanky - 2 DigitalNameTag - 1 Sac - 1
Total Time Spent (Reference Only):
dsparil - 1055h 56m 0s Digitalnametag - 454h JoeQ - 410h 49m 59s Threads - 385h 32m 0s Snake - 380h 21m 0s hades - 282h 0m 59s zerker - 246h 18m 0s Null0x00 - 231h Son of Suzy Creamcheese - 185h 26m 50s foopy64 - 180h 56m 59s toei - 179h 43m 0s Gamer Griff - 159h 30m ResidentTsundere - 158h 22m 0s moran - 143h 24m 0s halftheisland - 113h 15m alexmate - 97h 36m 59s Woody Alien - 92h 35m 59s paperchema - 71h wyldesyde - 50h 53m 59s X-pert74 - 50h 43m 0s DigitalNameTag - 41h Sac - 35h nerdybat - 15h spanky - 5h 29m 0s Murphy - 1h 36m 0s
First Play Time (Reference Only):
dsparil - 799h Digitalnametag - 317h zerker - 237h 37m 59s JoeQ - 223h 50m 0s Threads - 217h 5m 59s Null0x00 - 188h 30m Snake - 180h 56m 59s hades - 178h 31m 0s toei - 175h 9m 59s Son of Suzy Creamcheese - 164h 26m 50s Gamer Griff - 128h ResidentTsundere - 124h 30m foopy64 - 117h 57m 0s moran - 112h 54m 0s alexmate - 93h 36m 59s halftheisland - 79h 45m Woody Alien - 72h 35m 59s paperchema - 61h 30m X-pert74 - 50h 43m 0s DigitalNameTag - 41h wyldesyde - 37h 30m Sac - 35h nerdybat - 15h spanky - 5h 29m 0s Murphy - 1h 36m 0s
Total Time Spent (Timer + Estimated + Reference):
dsparil - 1050h 43m 26s (360h 48m 25s/101h/588h 54m 59s) JoeQ - 729h 13m 35s (520h 23m 34s/186h 30m/22h 19m 59s) Digitalnametag - 467h 34m 59s (89h 15m/333h 19m 59s/45h) Threads - 431h 38m 59s (380h 59m 0s/34h 9m 59s/16h 30m) zerker - 309h 1m 23s (29h 38m 22s/111h 15m/168h 7m 59s) Snake - 298h 6m 0s (75h 9m 0s/213h 56m 59s/9h) hades - 271h 12m 2s (46h 7m 2s/210h 35m 0s/14h 30m) Son of Suzy Creamcheese - 263h 4m 59s (77h 49m 59s/180h 15m/5h) foopy64 - 259h 48m 0s (4h 47m 59s/244h/11h) Gamer Griff - 235h (0s/125h/110h) Null0x00 - 215h 54m 59s (85h 25m 0s/100h 30m/30h) toei - 184h 11m 0s (1h 12m 59s/64h 30m/118h 28m 0s) ResidentTsundere - 182h 40m 49s (23h 55m 50s/130h 15m/28h 30m) moran - 179h 24m 41s (9h 40m 41s/135h 50m 0s/33h 53m 59s) alexmate - 112h 43m 0s (3h 23m/104h 19m 59s/5h) halftheisland - 109h 15m (0s/76h 30m/32h 45m) Woody Alien - 87h 34m 59s (10h 24m 59s/77h 10m 0s/0s) paperchema - 73h (31h/42h/0s) X-pert74 - 66h 58m 23s (16h 15m 24s/42h/8h 43m 0s) DigitalNameTag - 65h (0s/65h/0s) wyldesyde - 59h 53m 59s (0s/17h/42h 53m 59s) Sac - 35h (0s/0s/35h) nerdybat - 19h 33m 19s (15h 26m 19s/4h 6m 59s/0s) spanky - 5h 29m 0s (0s/0s/5h 29m 0s) Murphy - 1h 30m (0s/1h 30m/0s)
First Play Time (Timer + Estimated + Reference):
dsparil - 832h 33m 48s (277h 4m 49s/100h/455h 29m 0s) JoeQ - 486h 30m 46s (444h 40m 46s/19h 30m/22h 19m 59s) Digitalnametag - 367h 30m (84h 30m/238h/45h) Threads - 320h 8m 59s (292h 8m 59s/11h 30m/16h 30m) zerker - 300h 16m 23s (29h 38m 22s/109h 30m/161h 7m 59s) Son of Suzy Creamcheese - 240h 50m 0s (71h 34m 59s/169h 15m/0s) hades - 190h 58m 0s (39h 37m 59s/136h 50m 0s/14h 30m) foopy64 - 183h 18m 0s (4h 47m 59s/167h 30m/11h) toei - 179h 37m 59s (1h 12m 59s/64h 30m/113h 55m 0s) Null0x00 - 178h 22m 59s (81h 53m 0s/81h 30m/15h) Gamer Griff - 176h 30m (0s/75h/101h 30m) Snake - 166h 28m 0s (58h 43m 0s/107h 45m/0s) ResidentTsundere - 160h 37m 0s (9h 52m 0s/128h 45m/22h) moran - 152h 54m 0s (0s/119h/33h 53m 59s) alexmate - 110h 13m 0s (3h 23m/101h 49m 59s/5h) Woody Alien - 84h 4m 59s (10h 24m 59s/73h 40m 0s/0s) halftheisland - 82h 15m (0s/49h 30m/32h 45m) X-pert74 - 66h 58m 23s (16h 15m 24s/42h/8h 43m 0s) DigitalNameTag - 65h (0s/65h/0s) paperchema - 62h (31h/31h/0s) wyldesyde - 46h 30m (0s/17h/29h 30m) Sac - 35h (0s/0s/35h) nerdybat - 19h 33m 19s (15h 26m 19s/4h 6m 59s/0s) spanky - 5h 29m 0s (0s/0s/5h 29m 0s) Murphy - 1h 30m (0s/1h 30m/0s)
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