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Post by dsparil on Jan 6, 2023 11:04:34 GMT -5
Does not doing the "post-game" of DQXI count as not finishing it? I honestly don't know since I only made it up to act 2 before taking what has turned into a years long break.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Jan 6, 2023 11:36:57 GMT -5
I also missed out on the 3rd act of DQ11. At that point I had already sunk 110+ hours into the game partly because I was playing with some draconian rules turned on. That also meant the main game was pretty challenging at times, so I didn't need to get that out of the post-game. It would've been cool to continue to play around with the combat but I got my fill. And it's not like the main game didn't have engaging enough combat (again, this might be because of the draconian stuff).
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Post by excelsior on Jan 6, 2023 12:17:07 GMT -5
Does not doing the "post-game" of DQXI count as not finishing it? I honestly don't know since I only made it up to act 2 before taking what has turned into a years long break. From the perspective of this thread? It's a bit of a mixed message. You are given a full ending and credit sequence and asked to save your game. There's a brief message of 'the end' before some more flavour text and 'to be continued' appears. You are then bounced back to the title screen. When you start your game you are given a cutscene that marks the beginning of act 3. The act allows you to completely rework your ability tree for each character and provides a rather large bump in the challenge department. My interpretation was that the intent is that the end of act 2 is a jumping off point with 3 being an added extra. Dragon Quest IX also held a great deal of content and challenge until after the credits and I think its going for the same thing.
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Post by dsparil on Jan 6, 2023 14:58:12 GMT -5
Looking through my records, spanky is the only person to actually finish DQXI while I've been doing this and he did do the post-game. However, in 2018 Snake got away with not doing it so I'll stick with Son of Suzy's Creamcheese's allowance at that time.
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Post by Snake on Jan 6, 2023 15:41:25 GMT -5
Looking through my records, spanky is the only person to actually finish DQXI while I've been doing this and he did do the post-game. However, in 2018 Snake got away with not doing it so I'll stick with Son of Suzy's Creamcheese's allowance at that time. What?! Poppycock! Did I not claim DQ XI's true ending? Took me about 80+ hours to finish the post-game, real ending. I'm pretty sure I wrote about how lovely nostalgic DQ XI was in making references to all the previous Dragon Quest games. Definitely feels like a Nier Automata scenario where you got to dig deeper for the real ending. Crap, I can't believe it's already been over 4 years since then.
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Post by dsparil on Jan 6, 2023 15:47:01 GMT -5
Looking through my records, spanky is the only person to actually finish DQXI while I've been doing this and he did do the post-game. However, in 2018 Snake got away with not doing it so I'll stick with Son of Suzy's Creamcheese's allowance at that time. What?! Poppycock! Did I not claim DQ XI's true ending? Took me about 80+ hours to finish the post-game, real ending. I'm pretty sure I wrote about how lovely nostalgic DQ XI was in making references to all the previous Dragon Quest games. Definitely feels like a Nier Automata scenario where you got to dig deeper for the real ending. Crap, I can't believe it's already been over 4 years since then. Not when you posted it. Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive AgeMy end save file, after credits, is 59 hours and 8 minutes. I have to say, this may be my favorite overall Dragon Quest (at least definitely up there with DQ V and DQ VIII). There's a lot in there that is cute, funny, touching, wondrous. There's a lot of bits in there, that have signature flavors of Yuji Horii and Akira Toriyama - recurring themes and ideas that across all the Dragon Quests. For sure, Dragon Quest II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, and IX. Even touches of Chrono Trigger. What they've really done, is up the story-telling with cinematic flair. In many ways, cinematography-wise, it reminded me a lot of Zelda:Breath of the Wild. I was never a big fan of Dragon Quest VII, but I think it would change my opinion if it was redone in Dragon Quest XI's style. At least to me, DQ VII felt episodic as you unlock map-to-map. In DQ XI, there are just as many subplots. But the way it plays out, full of gesture, expression, vocals, it got me much more emotionally invested. The music is classical music, classical Dragon Quest. Although for this one, there is a lot of reprisal of music tracks taken from DQ III, IV, V, VI, and VIII. And post-game still, there is much to do. It's very interesting, the direction the story goes once you finish.
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Post by Digitalnametag on Jan 6, 2023 20:08:15 GMT -5
Looks like I’m far from the only one to drop DQXI after finishing Act 2.
Note that I don’t care what Act counts as the end for the purpose of this thread. I just find the topic interesting.
I was happy to call the game done at Act 2, but personally did not feel like I had finished the game. Act 3 is just way too substantial.
I remember seeing an interview with the developer stating that they set the end of Act 2 up for people to jump off. I can’t think of another game that does this with what is clearly a lot of main story content left. Some of the Tales games have post story Chapters, but not as substantial as DQXI’s Act 3.
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Post by Snake on Jan 6, 2023 20:57:17 GMT -5
Not when you posted it. Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive AgeMy end save file, after credits, is 59 hours and 8 minutes. I have to say, this may be my favorite overall Dragon Quest (at least definitely up there with DQ V and DQ VIII). There's a lot in there that is cute, funny, touching, wondrous. There's a lot of bits in there, that have signature flavors of Yuji Horii and Akira Toriyama - recurring themes and ideas that across all the Dragon Quests. For sure, Dragon Quest II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, and IX. Even touches of Chrono Trigger. What they've really done, is up the story-telling with cinematic flair. In many ways, cinematography-wise, it reminded me a lot of Zelda:Breath of the Wild. I was never a big fan of Dragon Quest VII, but I think it would change my opinion if it was redone in Dragon Quest XI's style. At least to me, DQ VII felt episodic as you unlock map-to-map. In DQ XI, there are just as many subplots. But the way it plays out, full of gesture, expression, vocals, it got me much more emotionally invested. The music is classical music, classical Dragon Quest. Although for this one, there is a lot of reprisal of music tracks taken from DQ III, IV, V, VI, and VIII. And post-game still, there is much to do. It's very interesting, the direction the story goes once you finish. Good memory! Good catch! Seems kind of sad if Act 2 was considered the ending... finishing it to the end felt more conclusive and satisfying. I didn't really think of the later half of Dragon Quest XI to be "that" long. It moves at a brisk pace of various fetch quests, till the eventual shodown.
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Post by excelsior on Jan 7, 2023 2:29:57 GMT -5
Did anyone end up picking up the new spin off from DQXI? Treasures? I've been considering it but I'm not clear what the gameplay loop is on that one. It's a matter of how combat heavy it is - I was hoping the combat aspect wasn't too involved or frequent and it could be played more for relaxation. I remember seeing an interview with the developer stating that they set the end of Act 2 up for people to jump off. I can’t think of another game that does this with what is clearly a lot of main story content left. Some of the Tales games have post story Chapters, but not as substantial as DQXI’s Act 3. Pokémon Legends Arceus? It doesn't even introduce the titular theme until post credits. Post credits is all about filling your Pokedex and catching Legendary Pokémon but it does offer a jumping off point with the credits before the end.
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Post by dsparil on Jan 7, 2023 8:25:23 GMT -5
Tetra [for Nintendo Switch International Edition] (Switch, First Time)
A melancholy and dreamlike adventure game focused on mechanical puzzles. It took me a while to warm up to it, but it did eventually. The only problem is that it's really short.
Rating: 7
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Jan 7, 2023 13:58:02 GMT -5
Looking through my records, spanky is the only person to actually finish DQXI while I've been doing this and he did do the post-game. I finished it in 2021. Maybe that was before the rule that you can post games you didn't started in the current year was introduced or something.
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Post by dsparil on Jan 8, 2023 14:33:22 GMT -5
Looking through my records, spanky is the only person to actually finish DQXI while I've been doing this and he did do the post-game. I finished it in 2021. Maybe that was before the rule that you can post games you didn't started in the current year was introduced or something. It was. That was a rule that got carried forward for too long.
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Post by excelsior on Jan 10, 2023 2:35:39 GMT -5
Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped (PS1 via Steam Deck, First Time, 6 Hrs Appx)I finally got around to a playthrough of the third Crash game. I didn't aim for 100%, since the box destroying puzzles aren't enjoyable to me, though I did like the time trials in this game. I found Crash 3 to be a bit of a step up from its predecessors. The visuals are given a nice boost, with backgrounds being easier to read whilst showing more detail this time around. The stages themselves feel like they have an all around increase in polish, particularly noticeable in vehicle segments, which I'd dreaded in the second outing, but now become a welcome highlight; outside of the late game airplane stage which simply requires too much of the player. I particularly enjoyed the motorcycle and speed boat stages in this game, and the 3D shmup style boss was my favourite. As far as the normal stages, they are all nice enough. There's a time travel theme going on here, but I never feel like full advantage is taken from it, and honestly I could have not realised it was there if not for the cutscenes. Quite a few of the stages are simply timeline indifferent. Crash has a selection of moves that he gains after each boss encounter such as a double jump and a hovering spin mechanism. These do add a good deal of differentiation to the platforming that was missing from the original entry. That said, enemies encountered throughout stages need to be passed through a good deal of precision, which is my biggest issue with the game, and suggests that Naughty Dog were never comfortable with dynamic gameplay. I definitely find Crash 3 to be the best of the Naughty Dog Crash platformers, but at this point the series is showing its age. Less strict enemy interactions would give the game a more fun and less rigid feel, and Crash's extended moveset should be available from the start to this same end. It's tough to imagine Naughty Dog would have been able to evolve Crash beyond those recurring issues, considering they continue to plague their later products. Score - 7/10
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Post by dsparil on Jan 11, 2023 9:08:40 GMT -5
Go! Go! Ackman 2 (SNES, Replay)
I last posted this exactly four years ago and said at the time:
Now that there is a fan translation of this entry, I can safely say that knowing what’s going on does not make the game better. The translation has issues, but the story itself is so barely there anyway that it’s less of a problem than it could be. Aside from the names of the characters, it doesn’t contain anything that couldn’t be figured out visually.
I finished in 01:04:58.
Rating: 6
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Post by dsparil on Jan 12, 2023 14:29:38 GMT -5
Sonic Frontiers (Switch, First Time) I guess I’ll be the one to dislike Sonic Frontiers. The short version is that this is very much a game of quantity over quality and the quality is all over the place. At its best, it’s actually quite good, but at its worst, it is just awful. Most of it falls into a sort of unremarkable middle ground though. That applies to basically everything in the game: the islands, the Cyberspace levels, the mini-bosses, the regular bosses and even the story. I don’t quite think this is a truly finished game, and it’s more of a thrown together game. The general quality falls off after the second island which is the high point of the game; the game has five areas that get called ___ Island but the fourth is conceptually part of the first and is a sort of interlude. The second island is a detailed environment and the mini-platforming challenges are better integrated into the landscape than what follows. The subsequent two main islands are a lot blander and the last one doesn’t even have a main story. The boss battle for it is galling in how little effort was put into it since it’s basically the finale on Easy and Normal difficulty. The extra/true final boss battle you get when playing on Hard is one of the better parts of the game, but the actually ending is so perfunctory it might as well not exist. Also, is there even any difference between the difficulties? I kept it on Hard, but I tried out the others too and didn’t notice any differences. Even after patches there’s still a fair amount of technical issues. I found myself falling through platforms and rails with some regularity and even got stuck inside the terrain a few times. The most severe and possibly game breaking bugs e.g. bosses disappearing have been fixed at this point, but there’s a lot of miscellaneous bugs that haven’t and I suspect won’t be. Performance on Switch is okay for the most part, but pop in can be high to the point that I sometimes missed how to get somewhere because the rail was slightly too far away to be rendered. I do have thoughts on what could have made this better from my perspective*, but it really comes down to if you put more value into the high points of a game or the low points. For me, there’s just too many bugs, filler and not well thought out elements. I do think that the core idea is perfectly sound, but the implementation is lacking. My last save was at 22:31:08. Rating: 5 * (I wouldn’t necessarily consider any of this spoilers, but just in case) Cut out the third island entirely, and move its story content and boss to the last one. Make collecting Memory Tokens completely optional and use the Challenges that already exist for their gameplay function. Divide the six towers on Rhea Island (the interlude one) between the remaining three islands and take out Rhea Island. Tie map coverage to the towers instead of Challenges, and move the tower cutscenes to hitting certain low Memory Token goals like 25% and 50%. That’s just off the top of my head, but my main point is that the game could use trimming.
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