Games Beaten 2017

[Exhuminator]

I suspect that nostalgia leads a lot of gamers to remember it as being better than it really is

I value your opinion and don't contest it, but to offer my own perspective...

I too had heard how wonderful FFT is for years upon years. But it was not until 2014 before I finally played through it myself (via the original PS1 version patched with the PSP's translation). However, unlike yourself, I found FFT to live up to its hype. I absolutely loved it, 9/10 loved it. I can understand your criticism of the game's characters and plot, as it's all rather dry. But the gameplay is still golden in my book.

Regardless of our difference of opinion, congratulations on finishing another classic.

[Xeogred]

I played it back in the day before the PS2 launched. Didn't like it much then. The hype was everywhere even then, "The BEST FF ever", so I replayed it a second time years later to confirm my suspicions, and still didn't leave much of an impression on me. Then I played Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together a few years ago and I now have reason to never replay any FFT ever again. I already liked Arc the Lad 1-2 more than FFT anyways and I personally just didn't see how FFT stacked up compared to the rest of the FF franchise for me.

I dislike SRPG's that force you into only using 2-5 units per battle.

I hear the PSP version has a new translation, but I'm not sure how that can fix how bad the pacing is in general for the last third. The final boss is about as Necron as it gets.

[Ack]

Today I Learned: Elkin really likes noses on his characters.

[Sarge]

January:

1) The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (PC) (8.5) (1/1) (~5.5 hours)
2) ActRaiser (SNES) (8.0) (1/2) (~4 hours)
3) Bonk's Revenge (GB) (6.0) (1/3) (~1 hour)
4) Tiny Toon Adventures: Babs' Big Break (GB) (6.5) (1/3) (~1 hour)
5) Blackwell Legacy (PC) (7.0) (1/5) (2.6 hours)
6) Blackwell Unbound (PC) (7.5) (1/7) (2.2 hours)
7) Blackwell Convergence (PC) (8.0) (1/7) (2.4 hours)
8) Blackwell Deception (PC) (8.0) (1/8) (4.7 hours)
9) Blackwell Epiphany (PC) (9.0) (1/9) (6.5 hours)
10) Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS4) (8.0) (1/22) (~55 hours)
11) Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (360) (8.0) (1/28) (~.5 hours)
12) Deep Duck Trouble Starring Donald Duck (SMS) (6.5) (1/31) (~1 hour)

February:
13) Quackshot Starring Donald Duck (GEN) (7.5) (2/7) (~2 hours)
14) Fire Emblem Heroes (Android) (8.0) (2/9) (~10 hours)
15) Super C (NES) (9.5) (2/20) (~0.5 hours)
16) Contra (NES) (10.0) (2/20) (~0.5 hours)
17) Mickey's Dangerous Chase (GB) (6.5) (2/24) (~1 hour)

So this is one of the games I found in a retro game store today. It's basically a Rescue Rangers-style platformer. It seems pretty simple to start, but it really gets quite tough starting in Stage 4. Stage 5 also has some brutal segments, and the last boss can be really rough if you don't have much life. I don't think it was the emulator, but at times the controls felt pretty laggy, I'm assuming when there were too many boxes on-screen among other things. This made some jumps really tough.

Speaking of jumps, you know those sort of wraparound jumps that you sometimes need to do in Super Mario Bros.? Jumping out and then pulling back in to get on a block directly overhead? Yeah, that's quite literally a significant part of the level design here, except the physics for those jumps require you to be nearly frame-perfect. It's really, really tough.

Also, there are auto-scrolling chase levels where you pilot some vehicle, like a boat, car, balloon, or ride birds down a cliff. Those can be really challenging as well.

Anyway, I was doing great until I hit 4-2, got to that chase segment, and beat my head against it until I just decided to save state. Funnily enough, when I did that, I cleared it.

If you want a decent GB platformer, it's worth a shot, just don't expect a cakewalk!

EDIT: And I'm apparently not crazy, the speedrunners at AGDQ mention the same things about the difficulty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w1dxDhAW0Y

[REPO Man]

The Simpsons Arcade (360) - USA rom, lowest difficulty as Marge.

Power Rangers: Beats of Power - Special Edition (PC), an OpenBOR mod based on Power Rangers, specifically Season 2 (Tommy is the White Ranger, though if you scroll past either side of the character select screen, you can choose Tommy as the Green Ranger). The latest version, dubbed the Special Edition, adds 4-player multiplayer and a few new things. It's on GameJolt. I only beat it on Easy, so I didn't get the real ending.

[REPO Man]

Oh, and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon for 360! Still gotta get 2 achievements. One is the one for killing 25 dragons (easy since I've got the Killstar) and the last one is the one for killing each kind of enemy with a headshot.

[MrPopo]

1. Pokémon Moon - 3DS
2. Tony Hawk's Underground - GCN
3. Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising - PC
4. Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II: Retribution - PC
5. Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness - PSP
6. X-Wing: Imperial Pursuit - PC
7. Star Wars Republic Commando - PC
8. X-Wing: B-Wing - PC
9. Blazing Lazers - TG-16
10. Tales of Xillia 2 - PS3
11. Shining Force CD: Shining Force Gaiden - Sega CD
12. MUSHA - Genesis
13. Sonic CD - Sega CD
14. Final Fantasy Legend III - GB
15. Tales of Zestiria - PS3

Ugh, I hate hate hate hate hate the combat in this game. Fortunately the characters and story were enough to keep me going. It's really a shame because I really enjoyed the combat in Xillia 2, so this felt like a massive step back.

So Zestiria has the same sort of system as Graces, so you again have a system of every attack being an arte, with a distinction between weapon attacks, weapon specials, and spells. Unlike Graces this game actually lets you do full combos from the get-go, but it balances that by forcing more pauses for your attack resource to recharge; it's more of a gradual pause rather than the fast pause of Graces. Just like Graces your attacks are far too busy, leading to general clusterfucks in normal battles. The idea was to force more tactical choices by having every attack variation capable of striking a different weakness, but mostly it's just memorizing the elemental ones and looking up the monster family ones if necessary to initiate a weakness chain.

The new thing in the game is a system called armitization. This relies on the story fact that in battle two of your characters are human and two are seraphs, which are magical humanoids who are invisible to normal people and after the story event that makes you the chosen hero gain the ability to fuse with you. This fusion combines all the stats of the individual characters and gives you a hugeass weapon to wreck havoc with. Now, this is cool, but it ends up taking over the combat in a big way, especially once you realize just how easy it can be to chain interrupt bosses with the armitized spells. Suddenly all that combat relying on baiting out attacks and dodging goes out the window and instead you just mash spells all the time. Because the fusion is a raw sum of stats combat ends up being balanced around that, which means you are hilariously fragile when not fused and all your major damage is in fusion form. Combined with how easy it is to get the fusion resource and you no longer have a reason to fight boss fights in the traditional way.

I personally found the equipment system to be utterly tedious once I got past the first third of the game. The idea is that all your gear can have one or more skills on it that are minor stat buffs. Stacking particular skills or skills that are collocated on a grid will give you bonus skills; the most valuable one early gives you +20 to all stats (which is quite a lot for quite a while). There's a system of combining gear with the same name to add/update skills and enhance the base stats. It's clear that when you're doing bonus dungeons or super difficulties you want to take advantage of these skill stacks as much as possible. But in the game proper it's completely unnecessary once the +20 no longer is a large number. Instead you're best off just using gear that has good inherent stats. One interesting thing is all gear has a primary stat it buffs and maybe a secondary stat. These stats are the only benefits (outside skills) that gear gives you. So you can have a sword that gives arte defense or a chest piece that gives physical attack. In fact, you have the option of heavily weighting things towards one stat as a result. Again, a potential interesting idea that's marred by things like random shop inventory and many pieces only coming from drops/chests.

The story and characters were at least enjoyable. The game asks questions about the nature of your standard hero protagonist. How much should he engage in helping others? Sure, it's nice to help someone out, but does that breed dependence or resentment from those you don't help? And it tackles that age old JRPG trope of trying to redeem bad guys. This game requires you to out right kill several major enemies that in another game you'd leave alive now that they're no longer a threat after the boss fight; your protagonist has to come to terms with the fact that sometimes the only way to save someone is to put them out of their cursed existence. It's given gravity but doesn't fall into angst; it's part of the hero growing from a naïve idealist to a tempered hero who still retains that core of idealism.

[elricorico]

1. Crimson Skies:High Road to Revenge (XBOX)
2. Super Smash Bros WiiU (WiiU)
3. Fire Emblem Heroes (Android)

4. Shantae and the Pirate's Curse (WiiU)

I rolled the credits on Shantae and the Pirate's Curse last night. This was a game that I got as part of the Humble Nintendo Bundle some time ago, so it came and a very low price and I got far more than my money's worth.

This is the first game I've played for the series, and I came in with limited knowledge about what to expect - aside from it being something of a retro inspired 2d platformer. What I got was a bright and colourful adventure that had excellent pacing and level design, beautiful pixel art and a fairly forgiving difficulty curve. This game was a lot of fun to play, largely because it was a complete package, the right amount of attention was given to every aspect - from the visual presentation to the tight controls.

Shantae starts out with a very basic attack and jumping ability, and with each stage of the story you complete you gain new abilities. Each level is designed in a manner that eases you into learning the ability and also builds on previous abilities so that by the time you reach the end you are comfortable with using every trick in the book to make it through the final stage, which had some fairly challenging platforming to tackle.

I do have some minor gripes with this game. I found it had a bit too much emphasis on perky breasts and low rise pants in the character designs. Not that I don't enjoy it, but I don't need every character to have those same features with only minor differences. The difficulty is a little low; by the end of the first stage you have enough gems to buy a handful of auto-potions and you are practically invincible as long as you restock those before each stage. Also one more -

The last boss really felt like it needed a second form. I was certain something was coming but it just never happened. Maybe in the unlocked mode?

If you like 2D platforming I can't imagine you wouldn't enjoy this game. It took me about 10 hours to beat, so it doesn't overstay its welcome, and it never got frustrating or boring. There is another mode that was unlocked by finishing - I may come back to check it out soon.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Did you get the real ending? That makes the final boss fight a little more satisfying (especially if you have played the earlier games in the series), and it is actually fairly difficult.

Also, be sure to play Risky's Revenge and 1/2 Genie Hero. Both are excellent. (The original is good, but its design is a bit archaic.)

[PartridgeSenpai]

The biggest thing the Shantae games make me wish for is back in the day when sequels had number on the end, not just subtitles. It must be some kind of marketing thing that more people will want to join into a series casually if they don't think they're missing out on lore or anything.