I really enjoyed FFIV on the PSP, first time I'd played it and thought it had aged really well.
I played Interlude I think then bounced off After Years fairly early on, just more of the same really. FF sequels never seem to recapture the magic of the originals.
Do FFXIII next, wev, we can have a Soc playthrough of the most divisive instalment the series has ever seen.
I was thinking XIII based on the recent discussion! Gotta plough through the last fifth (roughly, I think, I'm in the Ancient City of (Guru)vegans) of XII first (though I know I'm in the wrong area)
Good choice, I was half joking anyway, Interlude is an utterly pointless 1-2 hour long…thing, not a lot of people like The After Years. But I don't care, it was more IV content and it's almost definitely not canon anyway, and it gave us a Kain the Spoiler - click to showHOLY DRAGOON as well.
See I want to play it to know what happens with a certain Dragoon (not clicking on the spoiler!!) what with my affinity to that role/class/job 🥰
January
Blasphemous
February
Horace
Agent A: A Puzzle In Disguise
The Burnable Garbage Day
March
Nothing
April
A Way Out
FEZ
May
South Park: The Fractured But Whole
Call of the Sea
Scott Pilgrim Vs The World
June
Tick Tock: A Game For Two
July
There Is No Game
August
Labyrinth City: Pierre the Maze Detective
Metroid: Zero Mission
Down in Bermuda
September
Super Metroid
Metroid Fusion - This was so good, easily the best 2D Metroid (before Dread, anyway). Harder than I remember too, I thought I'd got most of the secrets but only hit 51% complete which is ridiculous. It's a bit more linear than Super purely because it's much more story-driven and there are more instances of it locking doors to force you down a path. Even so, it's great. Getting my Dread code next week, so perfect timing.
Is S-AX a huge plus over Zero Mission and Super for you?
Fusion had the best mix of classic Metroid and modern sensibilities (little things like bonus pickups showing if they're collected or not). Zero Mission did that too, but it was working with a fixed template (and Metroid on NES has aged terribly). Fusion had more freedom, since it was new. And the SA-X is a great villain.
That said, I've played Dread and it's fantastic. So, that's a plus. 
A whole game of SA-X stalking sounds super good, looking forward to Dread!
I much preferred Zero Mission, I thought Fusion was too plot-heavy and linear. To be honest I’ve never really been a fan of the 2D Metroids, though I love the Prime games.
Prime 1 is godlike and one of the best games ever made but Prime 2 was kinda hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm for me. Would love to play it again (
) but I remember the Light/Dark stuff being really annoying, I could be totally and utterly wrong and/or was just bad at the game back then. Never played MP3.
Prime is god tier. Prime 2 wasn't great… the light/dark thing really overcomplicated things and just strung out what was otherwise a short experience (Prime 1 is also much shorter than you'd think). Prime 3 was good. We don't talk about Other M. 
I much preferred Zero Mission, I thought Fusion was too plot-heavy and linear.
I can see that. Zero Mission definitely benefited from Fusion's improvements without being hampered by the plot devices. It's just very, very short.
Prime 2 was actually excellent, but far too hard on its original release. They rebalanced it (in fact they rebalanced all three games, but 2 benefited the most) for the Wii re-release and that, combined with the amazing Wiimote controls, really allowed it to shine. It's a really fantastic game.
3 is also good but unfortunately hails from that Nintendo era where every single interaction needed complicated waggle mechanics. It's just a bit fiddly, and it doesn't need to be.
I'd love to revisit all three games but they don't seem in any hurry to re-release them on Switch and the controls will never be as good as they were on the Wii anyway. The games are probably caught in that awkward situation where they've dated just enough that a straight re-release wouldn't look as good as people remember, but any kind of proper remake would be prohibitively expensive (and presumably detract from Prime 4, if it actually exists).
Other M meanwhile is the worst game Nintendo has ever released as part of one of its major franchises, we really don't talk about that one.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Wrath of the Druids - well I guess it's just DLC but it kind of feels standalone - if the game didn't have all the RPG levelling stuff going on then I'm sure it would have been released as a standalone title in the way some other Assassin's Creed expansions have been in the past. Anyway, this was actually surprisingly good, more of this please. New area, new characters, decent storyline and some actual side activities to break up the main quest. A distinct improvement on the main game.
Life is Strange: True Colors - absolutely superb entry in one of my favourite series. Amazing characters, a great setting, and it's also a big step up technically which helps to bring everything to life. Both of the game's big twists completely got me (having gone into it knowing literally nothing about it) and it stuck the landing with ease. Alex Chen has become my favourite protagonist in the series and Haven Springs probably my favourite setting.
However. I know games should be judged on their own merit (and taken purely on its own merit, I loved this) but this really, really doesn't feel like a £50 videogame. It's both shorter and smaller in scope than the previous two games in the series (much of the game takes place on a single street), yet somehow much more expensive. It feels like a cynical attempt to extract as much money as possible from fans of the series before the inevitable sale / appearance on Game Pass. In my case I'd played all the previous games either on PS+ or Game Pass, so I guess I was a bit overdue in terms of supporting the developers and I don't mind too much, but it's a shame when you finish a game and your first reaction isn't "that was great!" but instead "is that all there is?"
Ys: Memories of Celceta
Ys: Lacrimos of Dana
Ys Origin
Ys I
Ys II
Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk
Tokyo Xanadu Ex+
Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore
Atelier Ryza
Tales of Eternia
Persona 2: Innocent Sin
Ys: The Oath in Felghana
Tales of Xillia 2
Lunar: the Silver Star Complete
Disco Elysium
Wild Arms 3
Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne
Hajimari no Kiseki
Dragon Quest 11
Skies of Arcadia
Xenogears
Suikoden
Tales of Arise
I actually beat this last night but I wanted to get all achievements for this and experience as much extra content as I could.
Fantastic game and probably Top 4 or Top 3 in my series ranking so far after Abyss and Vesperia. More than than simply being a great game it legit feels like we got the series back, Tales of Berseria is a well enough liked game and all but it's been so long since and after the initial announcement of Arise everyone assumed it was basically vapourware and/or in development hell so for it to come back and be as good as it is feels like some sort of small miracle. This is arguably as good as it is because of how long it did take to make too…so there you go, hashtag worth. Welcome back, Tales. <3
This is also a good start to the series, thankfully there's a demo which is good because while it's a good game this is very much a TALES OF game and Tales of games are anime as fuck. Also this is very clearly an outlier in a series that sometimes feels low budget as hell so going back from this will be a little jarring. I am still overall confident enough to say that Arise is the Symphonia/Vesperia of this generation.
Unironically can't WAIT to start Tales of Symphonia 2 after this, it's the only game in the series I've seen get as much if not technically more hate than Tales of Zestiria but I looked up the combat and it looks super smooth so I'm excited lol.
Ah cool, glad it's turned out well. Looking forward to it when I get there! Is there a magician's ring and/or are there dungeon/puzzles like symphonia/vesperia? I find they help to break up the anime-ness a bit… 😁
No Sorceror's Ring surprisngly and whilst the dungeons don't have puzzles they're like night and day from Zestiria/Berseria's bland offerings at least, I really liked them. I hated some of Symphonia's dungeons's too lol, that fucking Shadow one is a crime against against humanity…
The biggest loss for me is the lack of Victory Quotes, the post battle real time dialogue is great but it's not the same T_T. Good job there are hundreds and hundreds of skits still, a little more towards the serious side, but there are fun ones too.
If I had to make one other criticism is that enemies can be insanely tanky at times, and outside of the boost strikes which are special attacks everyone has it's hard to get a stagger in. The more you unlock the stronger you get though and Alphen's main mechanic of pulling out the Blazing Sword is super strong and super satisfying. :D
No Sorceror's Ring surprisngly and whilst the dungeons don't have puzzles they're like night and day from Zestiria/Berseria's bland offerings at least, I really liked them. I hated some of Symphonia's dungeons's too lol, that fucking Shadow one is a crime against against humanity…
Ha the shadow one can do one, but I enjoyed pretty much all the others! Glad there's a bit of meat on the bones in Arise dungeons at least tho. Tanky enemies are nothing new to the series either from memory, especially if you do optional ones. That stupid skull thing in symphonia for one…
Will add to the ever-growing sale/when I have time list. I've got a replay of Vesperia to get through for now, which I'm enjoying just as much second time through.
I am slowly making my way through the series, the last one I have as a physical copy is Symphonia 2 then after that it's going to be alternative means to play the ones we never got over here like Legendia, Destiny and, if we ever get translations, Rebirth and Innocence. Then my last game to beat will be Phantasia aka the first game in the series because I'm extra like that.
The Artful Escape
Not so much a game, more an interactive art installation. It wants to be Journey so badly it hurts, and to be absolutely fair to it there are a handful of moments - when you're sliding through fantastic alien environments wailing on your guitar - where it comes close; but those moments are bogged down by endless, endless dialogue boxes as the game's small cast of obnoxious hipsters talk drivel for ages. Overall, I can't say I enjoyed this one much. But it is very short, it has a few decent moments and it absolutely shits achievements, so there is that I guess.
But it is very short, it has a few decent moments and it absolutely shits achievements, so there is that I guess.
Handy to know, given I'm on a 36-week streak with the Microsoft Rewards stuff and 'Get three achievements' regularly pops up as one of the three trials.
January
Blasphemous
February
Horace
Agent A: A Puzzle In Disguise
The Burnable Garbage Day
March
Nothing
April
A Way Out
FEZ
May
South Park: The Fractured But Whole
Call of the Sea
Scott Pilgrim Vs The World
June
Tick Tock: A Game For Two
July
There Is No Game
August
Labyrinth City: Pierre the Maze Detective
Metroid: Zero Mission
Down in Bermuda
September
Super Metroid
Metroid Fusion
Flynn: Son of Crimson - It's a videogame. That's about the best thing I can say here. It's totally fine, but it's also so generic and nondescript; a pasta dish without the sauce, the very epitome of a railway cheese sandwich in videogame form. It's done, got all the achievements, but I can't say I particularly enjoyed or disliked it. It just… was. Not really a glowing recommendation then.
January
Blasphemous
February
Horace
Agent A: A Puzzle In Disguise
The Burnable Garbage Day
March
Nothing
April
A Way Out
FEZ
May
South Park: The Fractured But Whole
Call of the Sea
Scott Pilgrim Vs The World
June
Tick Tock: A Game For Two
July
There Is No Game
August
Labyrinth City: Pierre the Maze Detective
Metroid: Zero Mission
Down in Bermuda
September
Super Metroid
Metroid Fusion
Flynn: Son of Crimson
The Artful Escape - I liked the music (very Bill and Ted), and the visual flair but that's about it. Dull as ditchwater platforming, a one-note (ha!) 'rhythm' action mechanic and a story of self-discovery that's just meh. Thank god all the achievements were easy and it was over pretty quickly. Remind me next time that I really don't like Annapurna stuff.
Metroid Dread - Well, that was fucking great.
Finished Yakuza 6 - a really great send-off for Kiryu, with one of the best main stories in the series. Short and sweet compared to the epic that was 5. Combat and side-activities are a bit lacking but as an epilogue it works perfectly, and the characters are the best they have ever been.
Superliminal
Too long by a quarter, pretty good otherwise. Not as good as portal which is what it's gonna get compared to. Yeah, s'alright.
Mighty Goose
Pretty good.
I Am Fish
Dreadful shit.
Ghost of Tsushima
Golf Story
Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Superhot: Mind Control Delete
Monster Hunter World
Monster Hunter World: Iceborne
Astro's Playroom
Monster Hunter Rise
Streets of Rage 4
Murder By Numbers
Great stuff. Love mashup of Phoenix Wright and Picross, which kept me going for a good 20+ hours, and even got quite challenging towards the end.
(I can't believe it's the first thing I've completed since I "finished" Rise though.)
EDIT - it wasn't. Streets of Rage 4 is excellent, by the way, it's just that it's another 'got credits, but not nearly finished' job, hence the forgetting to actually log it.
Aragami 2
It's a modern tenchu game, so I got 1000/1000 gamerscore on it because that's what I do with tenchu games apparently.
Ghost of Tsushima
Golf Story
Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Superhot: Mind Control Delete
Monster Hunter World
Monster Hunter World: Iceborne
Astro's Playroom
Monster Hunter Rise
Streets of Rage 4
Murder By Numbers
Hollow Knight
Got credits, even though I'm only at about 82% completion, so I'm probably not done just yet, and will likely keep exploring for a bit to see what else I can find.
It's a wonderful game though, an all-timer as far as I'm concerned. I'm actually probably going to swerve Metroidvania for at least a couple of weeks after I'm done properly, as I'm worried that playing most similar games too soon after this might make them look worse by association.
I can never get into Hollow Knight, despite generally being a big fan of Metroidvanias. I've tried a couple of times and always bounce off it around the end of the second area. The bosses are just a little bit too hard, the save points always just a little bit too far away. If they could implement an instant retry for the bosses I'd probably love it, but I just end up spending all my time repeatedly slogging back to the boss from the save point, and getting really frustrated.
Maybe I'll give it another go once I've finished with Metroid Dread - in which I am currently, and entirely typically, completely lost. But it's very good.
Metroid Dread
This is the COMFIEST Metroid game, it controls silky smooth and you get upgrades really fast it feels like. I think this is a great place to hop on the Metroid train actually, even the EMMI sequences, which are 'practically' instant fails only really send you back like, 20 seconds back so you never feel punished for panicking and fucking up your escape. The map practically tells you where you saw upgrades so you know to come back for them and if you haven't found them it will highlight areas where they might be.
Also, the last boss in this game is practically Mega Man tier and probably one of my favourite fights in the franchise.
Spoiler - click to show The escape sequence in the Metroid Suit was fucking BONKERS I loved it. Samus and her damn suit are in DIRE need of detox though, holy shit. She's practically a new life form with all that different DNA now, even in the Prime games she gets infected again! Speaking of whom, her speaking Chozo was fucking awesome and she only really does it the once, they really fucking nailed her character
Holy shit. I’m still stuck on Kraid.
Metroid Prime
Last boss sucked but overall a good game and a good Metroid game.
Metroid Prime
Last boss sucked
No.
Only the part where she sheds her metal carapace, bit before it was cool when she's like 'Nooooo, I'm running away' and Samus runs after her. unless I was missing something and you can force her to drop a Phazon pool in that last phase I dunno' what's good about it, you can't hurt her until she does it and her attacks are super easy to dodge.
Interested in seeing how Prime 2 bosses are after all this time.
Did Prime feel slow after Dread?
This may be recency bias, but I think Dread might be my favourite Metroid.
I need to go back to Prime, I was halfway through a playthrough on Wii U a while back with my copy of the trilogy edition.
The thing that immediately struck me about Prime though is that it's much smaller than I remember it being. Not that that's a bad thing, but hey.
I think that actually works in its favour, it’s a Metroidvania where you mostly know where you are and where you’re going without having to constantly refer to the map.
Dread is great but its labyrinthine environments are very, very samey and without the map you’d never stand a chance.
Prime is definitely slower than Dread, and it was indeed smaller than I remember. Like Gar says is all to its benefit overall, I think any more would make traversal a trek, here it's just one look at a map and you know no matter what it's time to go through Magmoor Caverns again. :^)
And I don't think there's anything wrong with liking Dread the best, figure a lot of people will.
January
Blasphemous
February
Horace
Agent A: A Puzzle In Disguise
The Burnable Garbage Day
March
Nothing
April
A Way Out
FEZ
May
South Park: The Fractured But Whole
Call of the Sea
Scott Pilgrim Vs The World
June
Tick Tock: A Game For Two
July
There Is No Game
August
Labyrinth City: Pierre the Maze Detective
Metroid: Zero Mission
Down in Bermuda
September
Super Metroid
Metroid Fusion
Flynn: Son of Crimson
The Artful Escape
Metroid Dread
October
Psychonauts 2 - Really enjoyed this. Still retains a bit of the fiddly nature of the original (perspective occasionally makes judging distance/landings hard and the wafer-thin figments can be an utter pain to find sometimes) but still great. Got two achievements left to get, both related to finding all the collectibles… I don't have many left to find, so should have that done shortly.
Just a DLC but I completed Wavelengths which is the prequel DLC for Life is Strange: True Colors.
It's actually quite experimental, taking place over the course of a year but entirely within one location (the main game's record shop), and for almost all of it you're on your own. So it's a surprisingly detailed study of one character essentially talking to herself over a prolonged period of time.
Like True Colors itself, it's beautifully made, a bit too linear, really quite sad and leaves you wanting more. A successful bit of DLC, but there are so many more stories that could be told with these characters in this location and it's a shame that this is probably the end of the road for them.
Metroid Prime 2
This is a better game than Metroid Prime 1.
Metroid Prime 2
This is a better game than Metroid Prime 1.
You're absolutely right on that one.
I've only played Prime 2 once, on Wii, but this sounds like crazy talk.
Metroid Prime 2
This is a better game than Metroid Prime 1.
whatyoutalkinaboutwillis.gif
I think it was when I was doing Sky Sanctuary in MP2 that I realised I definitely preferred it to MP1, which is imo the best area in the Prime series thus far, I don't think I enjoyed progressing through any of MP1's zones nearly as much as that and Quadraxis is such a cool boss to boot.
Are you going to do Metroid Prime 3? I didn't play that one much, I remember the first hour or so was terrible with characters jabbering at you the whole time (emphatically NOT what I want from a Metroid game) and even once it settled into something more traditional, it was saddled with completely overdone waggle controls. After a couple of hours of having to do complex hand motions in the air to do something as simple as unlocking a door, I'd had enough. However I do wonder if the passing of time will have been kind to it, it certainly can't be as bad as Other M for instance.
I said I wouldn't, but I won't lie…I kinda' want to. I haven't played it before so that will help a lot, and I saw that scene where Ridley just fucking flies into Samus at high speed to send the both of you down that 16,000 metre or so shaft and you have to fire at him while falling to your death, it looked amazing. (also logisitcally speaking I'm not too sure how I'd go about it, even if you could force it to play like a GC game I dunno if I wanna' do that)
I am very surprised how many people I know who hated it more than MP2, I always thought MP2 was the black sheep but I've seen a fair few people say Corruption is the worst in the trilogy. All I know is it's got waggle, lots of NPCs (including the Hunters from the DS game right? that's kind of cool) and is apparently more linear even aside from the fact it's set on different planets and not one world.
I am certain I'd enjoy it at least.
Marvel's Avengers- AKA the most egregious bait-and-switch in modern gaming. Because the first 25% of this is genuinely excellent: a high-budget, spectacular single-player Avengers game that could rival Sony's first-party releases for style and polish. There are great environments to explore, a couple of boss fights against iconic Marvel villains, and some really nice character-building.
But then as soon as you unlock the "War Table" - which is the point at which the game opens up, lets you tackle side-missions and choose characters - it all goes to shit really, really quickly. Suddenly you're playing a single-player version of their shitty multiplayer mode, with endless copy-pasted environments, NPCs taking the place of other players, and nothing but robots to smash. And the game stays like this right the way up to the very final mission, where you get something hand-crafted again.
So most of the game is a bit bobbins, really. I mean the mechanics are sound enough but you don't get to unlock most of the characters' skill trees (because you're supposed to keep playing the multiplayer to do that), most of the characters play much the same as each other (because keeping things balanced in multiplayer is all-important) and pretty much all the loot you pick up is irrelevant.
And it doesn't understand its characters at all. You spend most of the game waiting to unlock Captain America, and when you do, you get to recreate that epic scene from the movies everyone loved where he… repeatedly hit loads of switches with his shield? And you get access to his iconic moves like… a double-jump? And a wall-run? Yeah. And then you realise Black Widow punches as hard as Hulk and you really start to realise what a mess this is.
Which is a real shame because as I said the first section is genuinely superb. You can literally see the point at which the cold dead hand of the studio reached in and throttled the life out of the single-player game, in the name of microtransactions.
There are three more DLC sections to play, which unlock three more characters (Kate Bishop, Hawkeye and Black Panther) - I might play these out of morbid fascination, just to see if the post-launch DLC addressed any of the issues with the main game. But I genuinely can't see myself playing the multiplayer. Why would I?
Dude, stop this. You're as old as I am. Life's too short. Play something else, we'll both be dead soon.
Ys: Memories of Celceta
Ys: Lacrimos of Dana
Ys Origin
Ys I
Ys II
Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk
Tokyo Xanadu Ex+
Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore
Atelier Ryza
Tales of Eternia
Persona 2: Innocent Sin
Ys: The Oath in Felghana
Tales of Xillia 2
Lunar: the Silver Star Complete
Disco Elysium
Wild Arms 3
Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne
Hajimari no Kiseki
Dragon Quest 11
Skies of Arcadia
Xenogears
Suikoden
Tales of Arise
Suikoden 2
Finally. I should have beaten this a while ago but I guess Arise and Metroid happened so that was that and it being on my backlog has weighed on me ever since.
One of the best RPGs on the PS1 though some aspects of it annoyed me a bit in a way that they don't in the original Suikoden, to the point where I wish I used a guide more to look up for recruiting some of the 108 recruitable characters and be able to test out more teams. (I had a white wolf the majority of the game, so it wasn't too bad)
Shout outs to Luca Blight, the terrifying Kefka-eque villain of the game, whose murderous rampages (one of which terrifies a young girl so badly she loses the ability to speak) and eventual death scene are highlights of the game. I just wish the game had less running about and recruiting characters wasn't such a pain in the ass compared to the first game.