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MrPopo
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Re: Games Beaten 2021

by MrPopo Tue Nov 23, 2021 3:04 pm

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

First 50:
1. EYE: Divine Cybermancy - PC
2. Legend of Grimrock - PC
3. Legend of Grimrock 2 - PC
4. Shovel Knight - Wii U
5. Yakuza: Like a Dragon - PS4
6. Yoshi's Island - SNES
7. Vectorman 2 - Genesis
8. Super Mario Sunshine - GC
9. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest - GC
10. Bomberman '93 - TG-16
11. Cannon Fodder - PC
12. Panzer Dragoon II Zwei - Saturn
13. Dragonborne - Game Boy
14. Rock n' Roll Racing - PC
15. The Lost Vikings - PC
16. Blackthorne - PC
17. Contra III: The Alien Wars - SNES
18. Bravely Default II - Switch
19. Axelay - SNES
20. Ryse: Son of Rome - XBOne
21. Killer Instinct (2013) - XBOne
22. Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition - PC
23. Thief: The Dark Project - PC
24. Killer Instinct - XBOne
25. Killer instinct 2 - XBOne
26. Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth - PC
27. Thief 2: The Metal Age - PC
28. Wing Commander II - PC
29. Wing Commander III - PC
30. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV - Switch
31. Shadow Man Remastered - PC
32. Wing Commander: Privateer - PC
33. Salt and Sanctuary - Switch
34. The Elder Scrolls: Arena - PC
35. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall - PC
36. Resident Evil Village - PC
37. SaGa Frontier Remastered - Switch
38. Metaloid: Origin - Switch
39. SaGa Scarlet Grace: Ambitions - Switch
40. Metro Exodus: The Two Colonels - PC
41. Metro Exodus: Sam's Story - PC
42. Panzer Paladin - Switch
43. Returnal - PS5
44. Dark Void Zero - DSiWare
45. Panzer Dragoon Saga - Saturn
46. Magic Knight Rayearth - Saturn
47. Cathedral - Switch
48. Final Fantasy VII Remake: INTERmission - PS5
49. Eterium - PC
50. A Street Cat's Tale - Switch

51. Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling - Switch
52. Banner of the Maid - Switch
53. CrossCode - Switch
54. Total Annihilation: The Core Contingency - PC
55. Ultima Underworld - PC
56. Betrayal at Krondor - PC
57. Assassin's Creed: Origins - PC
58. Axiom Verge 2 - Switch
59. Elderborn - PC
60. Hellbound - PC
61. Wargroove - Switch
62. Eye of the Beholder - PC
63. Quake: Dimension of the Past - PC
64. Quake: Dimension of the Machine - PC
65. Legends of Amberland: The Forgotten Crown - Switch
66. Anopek - PC
67. Baten Kaitos - Gamecube
68. No More Heroes 3 - Switch
69. Eye of the Beholder II - PC
70. Eye of the Beholder III - PC
71. Hedon II - PC
72. Deathloop - PC
73. Tales of Arise - PS5
74. Mechwarrior 5: Legend of the Kestrel Lancers - PC
75. Maneater: Truth Quest - PC
76. G String - PC
77. Thief (2014) - PC
78. Metroid Dread - Switch
79. Vomitoreum - PC
80. Severed Steel - PC
81. Syndicate - PC
82. Alan Wake - PC
83. Limitless Hunger - PC
84. Syndicate Wars - PC
85. They Always Run - PC
86. Control - PC
87. Control: The Foundation - PC
88. Control: AWE - PC
89. FIST: Forged in Shadow Torch - PS5
90. Beyond Good and Evil - PC
91. Call of Duty: Vanguard - PC
92. Dungeon Keeper 2 - PC
93. Shin Megami Tensei V - Switch

Shin Megami Tensei V is the latest mainline entry in the long running SMT series, bringing it back to the home console after the previous mainline title was on a portable. If you've played previous games, this one serves as a gameplay successor to SMT III: Nocturne, mostly just iterating on those bones. But it also ends up being the most approachable of all the mainline titles, while still retaining the good parts of the difficulty.

The game starts off in Tokyo, introducing you to a few characters, before an earthquake hits and you wake up in the ruins of Tokyo. There are angels and demons who are quickly hostile to you, but you get saved by a mysterious man who zooms in from the sky and merges with you. Now you have more hair than a Super Saiyan and can make a sword come out of your hand. Cue a series of adventures through this post-apocalyptic wasteland, recruiting demons, and trying to figure out what's going on. And in grand SMT tradition, by the end you get to decide what happens to the world in the long run.

The game uses Nocturne's Press Turn battle system, and maintains the same feeling. Each team starts off with a number of turn icons equal to the members (though bosses will be able to generate multiple), and taking a turn uses up one. But if your attack crits or hit a weakness then the icon instead flashes. Further crits and weaknesses will turn more icons flashing, while regular moves consume flashing icons first. So, you can get up to two attacks per party member if you play your cards right. But you need to be very conscious of enemy stats. Enemies that dodge consume two icons instead of one, same with if they null an attack. And if they repel or absorb your attack then your turn is over and the enemies get a chance to exploit your mistake. Though since you can do the same to them, bringing the right demons to fights is critical. One thing to point out for Nocturne veterans; bosses don't have access to Beast Eye/Dragon Eye (well, they do, but now it's a passive that increases accuracy, not a source of free flashing turns).

The big change to Nocturne is the world now has some open world trappings. Instead of being a series of narrow corridors you get a larger area that you can jump around and explore. Enemies show up on the world map and can chase you down. If you attack them before they're alerted you guarantee that you get the first turn, otherwise it's down to luck based on your stats. There are collectables in the world for cash and for special rewards, and you can get a demon follower who will let you dig up random items (including stat boosters). In the final section of the game, it goes full open world, where you get to explore the whole zone from the get go, rather than being gated by story beats.

On the demon fusion side, the game is the most approachable the series has ever been. You get to pick the skills you inherit and every demon can inherit any skill other than unique skills locked to a particular demon. The way the game expresses "this demon is good at this element" and "this demon is bad at this element" is a system of proficiencies. Demons can have pluses or minuses in all the skill categories. Pluses reduce the cost and minuses increase the cost (and the minus increase can be quite severe). There is a stat boosting item that increases those proficiencies, but they can only be used on an element the demon already has at least one plus in. So, you can amplify strengths but still have to deal with the weaknesses.

All in all, SMT V is a worthy successor to the series. It even has two new game plus modes; one is the "you restart at 1 but keep your compendium" like Persona uses, and the other is the "you keep your levels" that Chrono Trigger introduced. The latter is great for getting the other endings because relative level has a major effect on combat damage, so you can blow through basically the entire game with an end game party and just have to deal with doing all the story fights.
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prfsnl_gmr
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Re: Games Beaten 2021

by prfsnl_gmr Tue Nov 23, 2021 11:04 pm

First 60
1. Horace (Switch)
2. Ghostrunner (Switch)
3. Mickey’s Adventure in Numberland (NES)
4. Mickey’s Safari in Letterland (NES)
5. Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse (Genesis)
6. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Picross (3DS)
7. World of Illusion starring Mickey & Donald (Genesis)
8. Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse (Game Gear)
9. Land of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse (Game Gear)
10. Legend of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse (Game Gear)
11. Portal 2 [co-op] (PS3)
12. Operencia: The Stolen Sun (Switch)
13. The Knight of Queen (Switch)
14. Q.U.B.E. - Director’s Cut (PS3)
15. What the Golf?! (Switch)
16. Prune (iOS)
17. Kenshō (iOS)
18. For the Frog the Bell Tolls (GameBoy)
19. Holedown (iOS)
20. King’s Field (PS1)
21. My Friend Pedro (Switch)
22. MO: Astray (Switch)
23. EQI (Switch)
24. Foxyland (Switch)
25. Carrion (Switch)
26. QUBE 2 (Switch)
27. Aaero (Switch)
28. Portal 2 (PS3)
29. Alwa’s Awakening (Switch)
30. Alwa’s Legacy (Switch)
31. Mega Man 11 (Switch)
32. Superliminal (Switch)
33. Shantae & The Seven Sirens (Switch)
34. Halo 3 (360)
35. Legacy of the Wizard (NES)
36. Robo Warrior (NES)
37. Blaster Master Boy (GB)
38. Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars (3DS)
39. Donkey Kong Land (GB)
40. Mario & Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move (3DS)
41. Streets of Rage 4 (Switch)
42. Steamworld Dig 2 (3DS)
43. Mega Man: The Wily Wars (Genesis)
44. Streets of Rage (Game Gear)
45. Streets of Rage (Master System)
46. Streets of Rage 2 (Game Gear)
47. Streets of Rage II (Master System)
48. Ninja Gaiden (PC Engine)
49. Ninja Gaiden II (DOS)
50. Ninja Gaiden III (Lynx)
51. Ninja Gaiden Trilogy (SNES)
52. Kung Fu Master (Arcade)
53. Kung Fu Master (7800)
54. Vigilante (Master System)
55. Vigilante (Arcade)
56. Donkey Kong (7800)
57. Touhou Luna Nights (Switch)
58. Ori and the Will of the Wisps (Switch)
59. Robbit Mon Dieu (PS1)
60. Metroid Dread (Switch)

61. Metroid Prime Hunters (NDS)
62. Metroid Prime Federation Force (3DS)

Metroid Prime Federation Force is a good game. A very good game. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It certainly wasn’t the Metroid game people wanted in 2016, but it is nonetheless a very solid mission-based FPS.

In Federation Force, you play as an anonymous space marine piloting a mech in the service of the Galactic Federation. You take on a series of missions investigating space pirate activity in the Bermuda system, eventually uncovering an insidious plot. The game unfolds across 22 missions, and it features almost none of the backtracking, exploration or upgrading endemic to other games in the Metroid games. Rather, you start the game with every ability you need to complete it; all of the missions are completely linear; and the only upgrades are breakable “mod chips” that improve your stats.

Thankfully, the missions are varied, and the difficulty scales perfectly as you progress through the game. Some missions are just shooting a lot of space pirates; some see you escorting cargo to a ship; others have you exiting your mech Blaster Master-style to infiltrate a space pirate base; and others are just really tough boss fights. They never get old, and no mission is exactly like any other. Moreover, each mission, in addition to a primary objective, has a secondary objective and a “par” time that earn you bonus points and help you earn up to three medals for each mission. Earning medals allows you to unlock additional mod chip slots on your mech and, later, new paint jobs.

Sadly, it is clear that each mission was designed for multiple players, and despite repeated attempts, I never located anyone else in the world playing the game at the same time as me. (In other words, the multiplayer is dead.) You can still beat the game in “solo” mode, and although I didn’t do it, I suspect that, with a lot of practice, you could earn all the medals too. This is also probably true of the game’s unlockable hard mode. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but feel like I was missing something by not playing the game with other people, which is likely to be anyone’s experience playing the game now. (That said, if anyone reading this wants to play multiplayer, send me a PM!)

You play each mission from a first-person perspective, and since the 3DS has only one analog stick, the game controls a bit like a N64 FPS. I cut my teeth on those; so, the controls didn’t bother me. People used to using twin sticks or <shudder> a keyboard and mouse might need some time to adjust. (If you have a New Nintendo 3DS or a Circle Pad Pro, you can adjust the controls scheme, apparently.) You can lock onto targets, and you can adjust your aim slightly using the 3DS gyroscope. (The reliance on the gyroscope controls is very clever, but unfortunately, it means you can’t really play the game in 3D mode on an original 3DS.)

Despite the game’s much-maligned “chibi” art direction, it actually looks pretty great in action, and it sounds even better. The deep thud of your fully charged arm cannon is exceptionally satisfying, and I loved the sirens that go off as you boarded your landing ship for each mission.

In sum, Metroid Prime Federation Force is a really good game that dared to try something different with a beloved series. Nintendo did the game a disservice by placing the “Metroid” name on it, and I think people might have reacted to it better if it were positioned as more of a side-story to the Metroid series, rather than as the series’ future, which it clearly was not. I hope later games in the Metroid series borrow from it, and I’d actually really like to see a sequel or, at least, a successor at some point.
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MrPopo
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Location: Orange County, CA

Re: Games Beaten 2021

by MrPopo Wed Nov 24, 2021 7:21 pm

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

First 50:
1. EYE: Divine Cybermancy - PC
2. Legend of Grimrock - PC
3. Legend of Grimrock 2 - PC
4. Shovel Knight - Wii U
5. Yakuza: Like a Dragon - PS4
6. Yoshi's Island - SNES
7. Vectorman 2 - Genesis
8. Super Mario Sunshine - GC
9. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest - GC
10. Bomberman '93 - TG-16
11. Cannon Fodder - PC
12. Panzer Dragoon II Zwei - Saturn
13. Dragonborne - Game Boy
14. Rock n' Roll Racing - PC
15. The Lost Vikings - PC
16. Blackthorne - PC
17. Contra III: The Alien Wars - SNES
18. Bravely Default II - Switch
19. Axelay - SNES
20. Ryse: Son of Rome - XBOne
21. Killer Instinct (2013) - XBOne
22. Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition - PC
23. Thief: The Dark Project - PC
24. Killer Instinct - XBOne
25. Killer instinct 2 - XBOne
26. Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth - PC
27. Thief 2: The Metal Age - PC
28. Wing Commander II - PC
29. Wing Commander III - PC
30. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV - Switch
31. Shadow Man Remastered - PC
32. Wing Commander: Privateer - PC
33. Salt and Sanctuary - Switch
34. The Elder Scrolls: Arena - PC
35. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall - PC
36. Resident Evil Village - PC
37. SaGa Frontier Remastered - Switch
38. Metaloid: Origin - Switch
39. SaGa Scarlet Grace: Ambitions - Switch
40. Metro Exodus: The Two Colonels - PC
41. Metro Exodus: Sam's Story - PC
42. Panzer Paladin - Switch
43. Returnal - PS5
44. Dark Void Zero - DSiWare
45. Panzer Dragoon Saga - Saturn
46. Magic Knight Rayearth - Saturn
47. Cathedral - Switch
48. Final Fantasy VII Remake: INTERmission - PS5
49. Eterium - PC
50. A Street Cat's Tale - Switch

51. Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling - Switch
52. Banner of the Maid - Switch
53. CrossCode - Switch
54. Total Annihilation: The Core Contingency - PC
55. Ultima Underworld - PC
56. Betrayal at Krondor - PC
57. Assassin's Creed: Origins - PC
58. Axiom Verge 2 - Switch
59. Elderborn - PC
60. Hellbound - PC
61. Wargroove - Switch
62. Eye of the Beholder - PC
63. Quake: Dimension of the Past - PC
64. Quake: Dimension of the Machine - PC
65. Legends of Amberland: The Forgotten Crown - Switch
66. Anopek - PC
67. Baten Kaitos - Gamecube
68. No More Heroes 3 - Switch
69. Eye of the Beholder II - PC
70. Eye of the Beholder III - PC
71. Hedon II - PC
72. Deathloop - PC
73. Tales of Arise - PS5
74. Mechwarrior 5: Legend of the Kestrel Lancers - PC
75. Maneater: Truth Quest - PC
76. G String - PC
77. Thief (2014) - PC
78. Metroid Dread - Switch
79. Vomitoreum - PC
80. Severed Steel - PC
81. Syndicate - PC
82. Alan Wake - PC
83. Limitless Hunger - PC
84. Syndicate Wars - PC
85. They Always Run - PC
86. Control - PC
87. Control: The Foundation - PC
88. Control: AWE - PC
89. FIST: Forged in Shadow Torch - PS5
90. Beyond Good and Evil - PC
91. Call of Duty: Vanguard - PC
92. Dungeon Keeper 2 - PC
93. Shin Megami Tensei V - Switch
94. Pokemon Stadium 2 - N64

Pokemon Stadium 2 is mostly an upgrade to the original to allow for the addition of the Pokemon added in Gold/Silver/Crystal. It does shuffle around the cups a bit for earning rewards, and unfortunately it's mostly for the worse. And if you're using rental Pokemon be prepared for pain.

So the basic idea behind Stadium is to have the novelty of taking these 2D sprites and putting them in a fully realized 3D battle arena, complete with a pretty solid announcer who has a ton of lines for all the things that can go on in a match. There are several modes available to you. You can do standard versus battles against other humans, just like on the Game Boy, you can do minigames, you can use the Transfer Pak to play Pokemon on your TV, or you can engage in the single player mode of challenging the cups and gym battles. This is where the real meat of the game is.

The gym leaders section is basically an abbreviated story mode that reenacts the games. So you will fight all eight gym leaders, with a detour to fight Team Rocket, followed by the Elite Four, the Champion, then getting to do the Johto gym leaders and Red. Each of these is an individual set of one or more battles, up to five consecutive ones in the case of the Elite Four plus Champion. You select a team of six to carry you through that set of battles, and each match has the participants selecting three. You can see what your opponent's six are, but not what three they select. Then have a standard Pokemon battle. The cup challenges are more of a general tournament, where you plow through eight challengers with the same pick six for the cup, pick three in a battle setup. If you don't lose any Pokemon in a battle you earn a continue, which lets you keep your cup challenge going if you lose. The cups are divided into four types. The first is the Little Cup, which caps Pokemon at very low levels and only unevolved Pokemon that can evolve. The Poke Cup is divided into four tiers of harder fights that puts you in the level 50-55 range. The Prime Cup is level 100 Pokemon, and finally, the Challenge Cup is four tiers of random Pokemon.

You can transfer Pokemon from your Game Boy cart onto the game using the Transfer Pak, and this is the recommended way to compete, though it can be hard to craft your team to some of the restrictions. You also have access to rental Pokemon, and everything but Mew and Mewtwo are available, but they tend to have garbage stats and bad move pools. Oftentimes the final evolution won't end up being as good as the previous evolution due to being given extremely weak moves. If you're using the rentals then many fights turn into major RNG fests beyond the standard Pokemon RNG; you're praying that opponents use certain Pokemon at certain times so that you get the right sequence of counters. What complicates things is that unlike modern Pokemon games you aren't given the opportunity to switch out based on what is switching in, so if they switch in a counter you have to switch and eat the damage from their attack on the incoming Pokemon.

The other frustrating thing is that the final battle against the Rival which unlocks the Dodrio Game Boy and Round Two (do it all again, but harder) is locked behind the Chellenge Cup, which at bare minimum is you going through it four times at harder and harder difficulties with a random set of Pokemon with random moves. So it's hope and pray on top of hope and pray. This was not in the first Stadium, and really brings down the value of the game.

As a standalone product I would say Pokemon Stadium 2 is not great. If you are planning to put in the time to transfer Pokemon and craft teams to the game's requirements then you can have a lot of fun trying to come up with good setups, but if you're just using the rentals it's an exercise in frustration.
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PartridgeSenpai
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Re: Games Beaten 2021

by PartridgeSenpai Thu Nov 25, 2021 4:10 am

Partridge Senpai's 2021 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
* indicates a repeat

Games 1~51
1. Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland (PS3)
2. Portal 2 (PC) *
3. Atelier Judie: The Alchemist of Gramnad (PS2)
4. Pipo Saru 2001 (PS2)
5. Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (N64)
6. Atelier Viorate: The Alchemist of Gramnad 2 (PS2)
7. Kirby's Dream Land 3 (SFC)
8. The Legend of Mystical Ninja (SFC)
9. Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg (PS1)
10. Ganbare Goemon 2 (SFC)
11. Paper Mario: Origami King (Switch)
12. Star Fox 64 (N64) *
13. Super Paper Mario (Wii) *
14. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (GC) *
15. Demon's Crest (SNES)
16. Cathedral (Switch)
17. Super Mario 3D World (Switch) *
18. Bowser's Fury (Switch)
19. Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos (Switch)
20. moon (Switch)
21. Casltevania 64 (N64)
22. Captain Rainbow (Wii)
23. Doraemon: Nobita To Mittsu No Seireiseki (N64)
24. Blast Corps (N64)
25. Doraemon 2: Nobita To Hikari No Shinden (N64)
26. Custom Robo (N64)
27. Doraemon 3: Nobita No Machi SOS! (N64)
28. 64 Trump Collection: Alice No Wakuwaku Trump World (N64)
29. The Sunken City (PS4)
30. Lair of the Clockwork God (Switch)
31. Star Fox Adventures (GC)
32. Atelier Elie: The Alchemist of Salburg 2 (PS1)
33. Billy Hatcher & The Giant Egg (GC)
34. Mole Mania (GB)
35. Gargoyle's Quest (GB)
36. Rock Man 4 (Famicom) *
37. Wai Wai World (Famicom)
38. Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge (GB)
39. Mega Man (Switch) *
40. Mega Man 2 (Switch) *
41. Mega Man 3 (Switch) *
42. Rock Man 5 (Famicom) *
43. Mega Man 6 (Switch)
44. Mega Man 7 (Switch) *
45. Mega Man 8 (Switch) *
46. Mega Man 9 (Switch) *
47. Mega Man 10 (Switch)
48. Rock Man World 2 (GB) *
49. Rock Man World 3 (GB)
50. Rock Man World 4 (GB)
51. Rock Man World 5 (GB)

Games 52~100
52. Wai Wai World 2 (Famicom)
53. Tiny Toon Adventures (Famicom)
54. King Kong 2: Ikari No Megaton Punch (Famicom)
55. Yume Pengin Monogatari (Famicom)
56. Rock Man & Forte (SFC)
57. Rock Man X2 (Switch)
58. Rock Man X3 (Switch)
59. Rock Man X4 (Switch)
60. Rock Man X5 (Switch)
61. Rock Man X6 (Switch)
62. Rock Man X7 (Switch)
63. Rock Man X8 (Switch)
64. Mega Man: Powered Up (PSP)
65. Magical Taruruuto Kun: FANTASTIC WORLD!! (Famicom)
66. Maken Shao (PS2)
67. Getsu Fuuma Den (Famicom)
68. Rock Man D.A.S.H (PSP)
69. Brave Fencer Musashi (PS1)
70. Joe & Mac (SFC) *
71. Atelier Lilie: The Alchemist of Salburg 3 (PS2)
72. Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link (Famicom)
73. The Bouncer (PS2)
74. Rapid Angel (PS1)
75. Atelier Totori: The Alchemist of Arland 2 (PS3)
76. Drakengard 3 (PS3)
77. Alwa's Awakening (Switch)
78. Hermina & Culus (PS2)
79. Atelier Meruru: The Alchemist of Arland 3 (PS3)
80. Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti (Switch)
81. Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana (PS2)
82. Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana 2 (PS2)
83. Mario Kart 64 (N64)
84. Super Mario Kart (SFC)
85. Mario Kart Super Circuit (3DS)
86. Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (N64) *
87. Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (N64) *
88. Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap (3DS) *
89. Rock Man X: Command Mission (GC)
90. Pikmin (GC) *
91. Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures (GC) *
92. Far East of Eden 2: Manjimaru (GC)
93. Pikmin 2 (GC) *
94. Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (GC) *
95. Shin Megami Tensei (SFC)
96. Metroid Prime (GC)
97. Bomberman Jetters (GC)
98. Maximo (PS2)
99. Operation Logic Bomb (SNES)
100. Bombuzal (SFC)

101. Splatterhouse (PCE)
102. Shin Megami Tensei 2 (SFC)
103. Shin Megami Tensei if... (SFC)
104. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner (Saturn)
105. Alundra (PS1)
106. Lunar: Silver Star Story (Saturn)
107. Tales of Xillia (PS3)
108. Digimon Rumble Arena (PS1)
109. Blue Stinger (DC)
110. Clockwork Knight (Saturn)
111. Tales of Xillia 2 (PS3)
112. Nightmare Creatures (PS1)
113. Tales of Rebirth (PSP)
114. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Children: Red Book (GBC)

115. Heart of the Woods (PC)

The primary way my girlfriend and I do dates is by playing VNs with one another over Discord, and this is one such VN that she recommended we play together. We read out the voices while we play, so it tends to take us a bit longer than just reading it in your head would, so it took us some 15 hours to get through this over the course of a few weekends. We played it in English and got the best ending~.

Heart of the Woods is a story about Maddie and her best friend Tara during a quite tense part of their relationship. Maddie has decided to leave the paranormal-focused YouTube show they've worked on together for years and it's caused a lot of strain in the relationship, and they're doing one last big outing together before Maddie leaves the show, taking a trip across the world to the remote Scandinavian village of Eisenfeld to visit a fan who claims there are all sorts of supernatural occurrences there. It's a game with a pretty small cast, mostly just being Maddie, Tara, Morgan (the fan they're visiting) and a couple others, but I like stories like that, so it's no big deal. The story does hop perspectives around fairly frequently, but it mostly centers on Maddie and Morgan, jumping to people who aren't them only very occasionally.

The writing has a few typos here and there, but it's a very sweet love story. It's also a very queer (by which I mean LGBTQIA+), and a good one of those at that. The mystery of what's going on in the town is also told in an engaging fashion, and although there isn't a *ton* of interactivity, there are a few choices you get to make that dictate just how things end up once you've wrapped up your battle against the supernatural. The art is very pretty, and has a lot of fun, subtle touches to how its done even though there isn't a ton of it. Worth mentioning on that note is how good the music is as well, as it does an excellent job of setting the mood~.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. Heart of the Woods is an excellent and delightful queer romance VN. If that's your kind of thing, then this is absolutely worth checking out.

----

116. Analogue: A Hate Story (PC)

This is another VN that my girlfriend and I played through together. It's a shorter one, so we got through it in only 5 hours in one sitting, but it was something still very worthwhile despite the short length~.

You play an unnamed space pilot in the far future who gets a job to go out to the recently re-discovered generation ship, the Mugunghwa, that went missing a very long time ago. Your job is to retrieve the log data, particularly about the AI on the ship, and bring it back. Simple enough. Upon getting to the ship's interface, you meet the ship's AI Hyun-ae. Her text parsing feature has been worn away by time, so your forced to communicate through you answering binary prompts she gives you, as she does her best to help you complete your mission by bringing you old ship logs. The gameplay mostly consists of reading the logs and talking to Hyun-ae about them as well as also talking to the ship's other AI, Mute, about them.

It's a very interesting story that's both a cute romance (if you so choose) and an intriguing mystery. It's a super small cast of active characters; being just you, Hyun-ae, and Mute; but slowly learning about the world of the ancient past that the ship's log discuss is loads of fun. We got the ending where you leave the ship with Hyun-ae, but it has several other endings including one that plays with the nature of a VN being re-playable, which is just the kind of thing I love. The dialogue and character writing is very good, and the art is very pretty to boot, though there isn't a ton of it, ultimately. This is a very bite-sized game in many respects, and that goes for not just the run-time but the presentation as well. It does just what it needs to, and it fits the aesthetic of "interfacing with a really old space ship via a terminal" very well~.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is a really well put together little story. If you like sci-fi and history stuff and also enjoy a good mystery to unfurl, this is a great way to spend an evening~.
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prfsnl_gmr
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Re: Games Beaten 2021

by prfsnl_gmr Thu Nov 25, 2021 1:15 pm

First 60
1. Horace (Switch)
2. Ghostrunner (Switch)
3. Mickey’s Adventure in Numberland (NES)
4. Mickey’s Safari in Letterland (NES)
5. Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse (Genesis)
6. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Picross (3DS)
7. World of Illusion starring Mickey & Donald (Genesis)
8. Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse (Game Gear)
9. Land of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse (Game Gear)
10. Legend of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse (Game Gear)
11. Portal 2 [co-op] (PS3)
12. Operencia: The Stolen Sun (Switch)
13. The Knight of Queen (Switch)
14. Q.U.B.E. - Director’s Cut (PS3)
15. What the Golf?! (Switch)
16. Prune (iOS)
17. Kenshō (iOS)
18. For the Frog the Bell Tolls (GameBoy)
19. Holedown (iOS)
20. King’s Field (PS1)
21. My Friend Pedro (Switch)
22. MO: Astray (Switch)
23. EQI (Switch)
24. Foxyland (Switch)
25. Carrion (Switch)
26. QUBE 2 (Switch)
27. Aaero (Switch)
28. Portal 2 (PS3)
29. Alwa’s Awakening (Switch)
30. Alwa’s Legacy (Switch)
31. Mega Man 11 (Switch)
32. Superliminal (Switch)
33. Shantae & The Seven Sirens (Switch)
34. Halo 3 (360)
35. Legacy of the Wizard (NES)
36. Robo Warrior (NES)
37. Blaster Master Boy (GB)
38. Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars (3DS)
39. Donkey Kong Land (GB)
40. Mario & Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move (3DS)
41. Streets of Rage 4 (Switch)
42. Steamworld Dig 2 (3DS)
43. Mega Man: The Wily Wars (Genesis)
44. Streets of Rage (Game Gear)
45. Streets of Rage (Master System)
46. Streets of Rage 2 (Game Gear)
47. Streets of Rage II (Master System)
48. Ninja Gaiden (PC Engine)
49. Ninja Gaiden II (DOS)
50. Ninja Gaiden III (Lynx)
51. Ninja Gaiden Trilogy (SNES)
52. Kung Fu Master (Arcade)
53. Kung Fu Master (7800)
54. Vigilante (Master System)
55. Vigilante (Arcade)
56. Donkey Kong (7800)
57. Touhou Luna Nights (Switch)
58. Ori and the Will of the Wisps (Switch)
59. Robbit Mon Dieu (PS1)
60. Metroid Dread (Switch)

61. Metroid Prime Hunters (NDS)
62. Metroid Prime Federation Force (3DS)
63. Panzer Dragoon: Remake (Switch)

After 20+ years, I still have the touch, breezing through Panzer Dragoon: Remake on my first attempt using only one continue and with 88% shot down! (I’m a little rusty, I guess.) Panzer Dragoon is one of my favorite rail shooters, and the fact that I could beat the remake so quickly is a testament to how faithful the remake is to the Saturn original. The developers, basically, upgraded the visuals and otherwise left this classic game alone. Although I love its sequels more, I still love the original game, and I am fine with that choice. (If you don’t like the original as much as me, though, you may find the experience short and unsatisfying since it is, relatively, short and easy.) The atmosphere is still amazing, and the game looks stupendous. It also still plays wonderfully, and I would love to see the developers remake its sequel. Highly recommended (to fans of classic Saturn games).
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REPO Man
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Re: Games Beaten 2021

by REPO Man Fri Nov 26, 2021 3:02 am

Superliminal, this time on Switch, where it ran just as well as it did when I beat it on the PS4.
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MrPopo
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Re: Games Beaten 2021

by MrPopo Fri Nov 26, 2021 5:12 pm

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

First 50:
1. EYE: Divine Cybermancy - PC
2. Legend of Grimrock - PC
3. Legend of Grimrock 2 - PC
4. Shovel Knight - Wii U
5. Yakuza: Like a Dragon - PS4
6. Yoshi's Island - SNES
7. Vectorman 2 - Genesis
8. Super Mario Sunshine - GC
9. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest - GC
10. Bomberman '93 - TG-16
11. Cannon Fodder - PC
12. Panzer Dragoon II Zwei - Saturn
13. Dragonborne - Game Boy
14. Rock n' Roll Racing - PC
15. The Lost Vikings - PC
16. Blackthorne - PC
17. Contra III: The Alien Wars - SNES
18. Bravely Default II - Switch
19. Axelay - SNES
20. Ryse: Son of Rome - XBOne
21. Killer Instinct (2013) - XBOne
22. Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition - PC
23. Thief: The Dark Project - PC
24. Killer Instinct - XBOne
25. Killer instinct 2 - XBOne
26. Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth - PC
27. Thief 2: The Metal Age - PC
28. Wing Commander II - PC
29. Wing Commander III - PC
30. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV - Switch
31. Shadow Man Remastered - PC
32. Wing Commander: Privateer - PC
33. Salt and Sanctuary - Switch
34. The Elder Scrolls: Arena - PC
35. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall - PC
36. Resident Evil Village - PC
37. SaGa Frontier Remastered - Switch
38. Metaloid: Origin - Switch
39. SaGa Scarlet Grace: Ambitions - Switch
40. Metro Exodus: The Two Colonels - PC
41. Metro Exodus: Sam's Story - PC
42. Panzer Paladin - Switch
43. Returnal - PS5
44. Dark Void Zero - DSiWare
45. Panzer Dragoon Saga - Saturn
46. Magic Knight Rayearth - Saturn
47. Cathedral - Switch
48. Final Fantasy VII Remake: INTERmission - PS5
49. Eterium - PC
50. A Street Cat's Tale - Switch

51. Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling - Switch
52. Banner of the Maid - Switch
53. CrossCode - Switch
54. Total Annihilation: The Core Contingency - PC
55. Ultima Underworld - PC
56. Betrayal at Krondor - PC
57. Assassin's Creed: Origins - PC
58. Axiom Verge 2 - Switch
59. Elderborn - PC
60. Hellbound - PC
61. Wargroove - Switch
62. Eye of the Beholder - PC
63. Quake: Dimension of the Past - PC
64. Quake: Dimension of the Machine - PC
65. Legends of Amberland: The Forgotten Crown - Switch
66. Anopek - PC
67. Baten Kaitos - Gamecube
68. No More Heroes 3 - Switch
69. Eye of the Beholder II - PC
70. Eye of the Beholder III - PC
71. Hedon II - PC
72. Deathloop - PC
73. Tales of Arise - PS5
74. Mechwarrior 5: Legend of the Kestrel Lancers - PC
75. Maneater: Truth Quest - PC
76. G String - PC
77. Thief (2014) - PC
78. Metroid Dread - Switch
79. Vomitoreum - PC
80. Severed Steel - PC
81. Syndicate - PC
82. Alan Wake - PC
83. Limitless Hunger - PC
84. Syndicate Wars - PC
85. They Always Run - PC
86. Control - PC
87. Control: The Foundation - PC
88. Control: AWE - PC
89. FIST: Forged in Shadow Torch - PS5
90. Beyond Good and Evil - PC
91. Call of Duty: Vanguard - PC
92. Dungeon Keeper 2 - PC
93. Shin Megami Tensei V - Switch
94. Pokemon Stadium 2 - N64
95. Pokemon Brilliant Diamond - Switch

Like the gens before it, the fourth gen has gotten a remake on modern hardware. We get a graphical upgrade plus a bunch of quality of life improvements. I would say that the differences aren't as big as they were for the first few gens' remakes. Gen four was when they divorced physical/special from type, so the performance of the mons are roughly similar to what they were originally (whereas the other remakes saw a major update to a lot of mons). The main thing added to the battling is Fairy is now a type, though with the makeup of the Sinnoh Dex that actually isn't a huge deal.

The original fourth gen games were already dabbling in 3D, with a sprites on 3D environments look. The remake goes full 3D, while keeping all the same ratios, so all the characters are these little blobby things that capture the original look of the sprites. It kinda doesn't work super great; it's not too bad in the default view but all the event scenes zoom in and really show off the blobs. By contrast, the battles themselves look good, as everything is rendered in appropriate sizes. Interestingly, Pokemon Stadium had much better battle animations. Here the animations tend to be a bit more generic and simple.

The actual story is completely unchanged, and any remake additions are relegated to the post game. About the only early game things that are new are the fact that you can get a Mew or Jirachi if you have other Pokemon save games on your Switch. Oh, I suppose that reminds me that the game automatically has Exp Share enabled with no ability to disable, so everyone not in your team gets half the experience of the primary battler. But I ended up just going solo Jirachi the entire game (except for one segment at the end where you NEED to have a second for a forced double battle that requires a double battle; all the other double battles either drop to two singles or are auto skipped). Had to cheese the Elite Four and Champion a bit with the speedrun strat of stacking X Stat items at the start and then hard sweeping (which was complicated on Cynthia, as I had to just heal through all her Spiritomb's attacks until she was out of ones that would two shot me).

I have complicated feelings about this gen in general. It was the first one to introduce the internet trading system, so it was the first gen that I started to really put forth effort into collecting, as I was able to do trades to fill out my dex. But on the other hand, the side activities are extreme busywork and the actual native dex is kinda blah (and unbalanced, only one fire type aside from the starter anyone?) It also feels like this is the point where the regional bad guy team starts to become less and less interesting. But at the end of the day, it's Pokemon, you alread knew if you were going to snag this or not.
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Ack
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Re: Games Beaten 2021

by Ack Sat Nov 27, 2021 1:45 pm

1. Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard (PC)(Adventure)
2. Revulsion (PC)(FPS)
3. Nonogram - Master's Legacy (PC)(Puzzle)
4. Sekiro (PC)(Action-Adventure)
5. Grim Dawn (PC)(Action RPG)
6. Grim Dawn: Ashes of Malmouth (PC)(Action RPG)
7. Grim Dawn: Forgotten Gods (PC)(Action RPG)

8. Viscera Cleanup Detail: Santa's Rampage (PC)(FPS)
9. Viscera Cleanup Detail: Shadow Warrior (PC)(FPS)
10. Shrine (PC)(FPS)
11. Record of Lodoss War - Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth (PC)(Adventure)
12. Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone (PC)(Action)
13. Red Alliance (PC)(FPS)
14. The Forest (PC)(Horror)
15. Pixel Puzzles: Japan (PC)(Puzzle)
16. 12 is Better Than 6 (PC)(Top Down Shooter)
17. Torchlight II (PC)(RPG)

18. An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire (PC)(RPG)
19. Port of Call (PC)(Walking Sim)

20. NeonCode (PC)(Walking Sim)
21. Carrion (PC)(Adventure)
22. Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist (PC)(Walking Sim)
23. Helltaker (PC)(Puzzle)
24. Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr (PC)(RPG)

25. Castlevania: Bloodlines (Switch)(Platformer)
26. Treachery in Beatdown City (Switch)(RPG)
27. Zeno Clash (PC)(Action)
28. Borderlands: Enhanced Edition (PC)(FPS/RPG)
29. Ion Fury (PC)(FPS)
30. Wolfenstein: The Old Blood (PC)(FPS)
31. Shrine II (PC)(FPS)
32. Lycanthorn I (PC)(Action Platformer)

33. Lycanthorn II (PC)(Action Platformer)
34. DLC Quest (PC)(Adventure)
35. Live Freemium or Die (PC)(Adventure)

36. Satellite Reign (PC)(Real-Time Tactics)
37. Heat Signature (PC)(Action)
38. HellSign (PC)(Action)
39. The Walking Dead: Season Two (PC)(Point-and-Click Adventure)

Noiseredux bought this game for me years ago after I had finished the first TellTale Walking Dead game. For years, I didn't play it as a sort of joke. But with Noise busy raising a family...I was feeling nostalgic, and it was time.

The Walking Dead: Season Two picks up a short while after the original game leaves off. In the first game, you play as Lee, a middle-aged man who ends up taking care of the young girl Clementine in the midst of a zombie outbreak. In the second, Clementine becomes the protagonist, and you now control her directly as she grows up into her pre-teen years during the zombie apocalypse. Depending on the decisions you make, she matures rapidly, far faster than many of the broken adults that surround her.

The game is a point-and-click, but a lot of it relies on decisions the player makes over the course of the game, and how characters react and feel, and how the storyline adapts, is all shaped by these decisions. That said, there are also a lot of things you cannot change, no matter what decisions you make. Occasionally there are also action sequences, such as needing to shoot an oncoming zombie before it kills you. While the game is generally forgiving in these periods, the story is more vital than the action, so keep your focus aimed there.

It is interesting to me to see how I have matured over the passage of years. The original game left a greater impact on me emotionally, but I believe that is because I couldn't accept that some things were simply beyond me; if a character died, I'd replay, trying to find that special formula that would keep everyone alive and happy, not believing that things were out of my control. That was my late 20s. Now I am in my late 30s, and when certain events unfold, I realize there is nothing I could do. I understand and accept, even if I don't necessarily like the result. Above all, I see the adults in the game losing their minds, and I know that my responsibility is to myself first and foremost, and I cannot save everyone or stop them from feeling certain ways towards me.

That's the strength of TellTale's storytelling ability, and the formula worked incredibly well at this point in the company's life. Though this style would inevitably grow stale as they pumped out property after property in these games, it was still effective for the first two Walking Dead games, perhaps because decisions could potentially have life or death consequences. But those decisions would just as often simply prolong a life to inevitably end a short time later, and so you must learn to accept failure and the things you cannot change and move forward.

I don't know if I will go further with this series, as TellTale crumbled away. I don't know if it's worth it. But the first two games came at different points in my life, and they have helped lead to insight into myself and where I am at these points, and that makes for a stronger impact than most games I play. I'm actually rather glad I waited so long to play the second, though I am also very glad I played it.

Thank you, Noise, my friend.
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Re: Games Beaten 2021

by MrPopo Sun Nov 28, 2021 10:51 pm

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

First 50:
1. EYE: Divine Cybermancy - PC
2. Legend of Grimrock - PC
3. Legend of Grimrock 2 - PC
4. Shovel Knight - Wii U
5. Yakuza: Like a Dragon - PS4
6. Yoshi's Island - SNES
7. Vectorman 2 - Genesis
8. Super Mario Sunshine - GC
9. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest - GC
10. Bomberman '93 - TG-16
11. Cannon Fodder - PC
12. Panzer Dragoon II Zwei - Saturn
13. Dragonborne - Game Boy
14. Rock n' Roll Racing - PC
15. The Lost Vikings - PC
16. Blackthorne - PC
17. Contra III: The Alien Wars - SNES
18. Bravely Default II - Switch
19. Axelay - SNES
20. Ryse: Son of Rome - XBOne
21. Killer Instinct (2013) - XBOne
22. Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition - PC
23. Thief: The Dark Project - PC
24. Killer Instinct - XBOne
25. Killer instinct 2 - XBOne
26. Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth - PC
27. Thief 2: The Metal Age - PC
28. Wing Commander II - PC
29. Wing Commander III - PC
30. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV - Switch
31. Shadow Man Remastered - PC
32. Wing Commander: Privateer - PC
33. Salt and Sanctuary - Switch
34. The Elder Scrolls: Arena - PC
35. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall - PC
36. Resident Evil Village - PC
37. SaGa Frontier Remastered - Switch
38. Metaloid: Origin - Switch
39. SaGa Scarlet Grace: Ambitions - Switch
40. Metro Exodus: The Two Colonels - PC
41. Metro Exodus: Sam's Story - PC
42. Panzer Paladin - Switch
43. Returnal - PS5
44. Dark Void Zero - DSiWare
45. Panzer Dragoon Saga - Saturn
46. Magic Knight Rayearth - Saturn
47. Cathedral - Switch
48. Final Fantasy VII Remake: INTERmission - PS5
49. Eterium - PC
50. A Street Cat's Tale - Switch

51. Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling - Switch
52. Banner of the Maid - Switch
53. CrossCode - Switch
54. Total Annihilation: The Core Contingency - PC
55. Ultima Underworld - PC
56. Betrayal at Krondor - PC
57. Assassin's Creed: Origins - PC
58. Axiom Verge 2 - Switch
59. Elderborn - PC
60. Hellbound - PC
61. Wargroove - Switch
62. Eye of the Beholder - PC
63. Quake: Dimension of the Past - PC
64. Quake: Dimension of the Machine - PC
65. Legends of Amberland: The Forgotten Crown - Switch
66. Anopek - PC
67. Baten Kaitos - Gamecube
68. No More Heroes 3 - Switch
69. Eye of the Beholder II - PC
70. Eye of the Beholder III - PC
71. Hedon II - PC
72. Deathloop - PC
73. Tales of Arise - PS5
74. Mechwarrior 5: Legend of the Kestrel Lancers - PC
75. Maneater: Truth Quest - PC
76. G String - PC
77. Thief (2014) - PC
78. Metroid Dread - Switch
79. Vomitoreum - PC
80. Severed Steel - PC
81. Syndicate - PC
82. Alan Wake - PC
83. Limitless Hunger - PC
84. Syndicate Wars - PC
85. They Always Run - PC
86. Control - PC
87. Control: The Foundation - PC
88. Control: AWE - PC
89. FIST: Forged in Shadow Torch - PS5
90. Beyond Good and Evil - PC
91. Call of Duty: Vanguard - PC
92. Dungeon Keeper 2 - PC
93. Shin Megami Tensei V - Switch
94. Pokemon Stadium 2 - N64
95. Pokemon Brilliant Diamond - Switch
96. Battlespire - PC

Battlespire is a spinoff of the Elder Scrolls series that expands on the backstory of Arena and shifts the gameplay a bit to focus entirely on the dungeon crawling. It also adds in the worst jump mechanic I've ever encountered in a game that actually wants you to jump now and again. The game is buggy, the voice acting is hilariously bad, and the written dialog has that 90s "humor by people who aren't actually funny". And yet, I still enjoyed it more than Daggerfall, which came out shortly before, which ends up being a pretty big indictment of just how badly Daggerfall messed things up.

The story of the game is pretty simple. You're an initiate to the Imperial Battlemages and are going to the Battlespire, a magic school that lives between the planes because why would mages want to do anything simply? But when you enter you discover the place is overrun by daedra and your training partner has apparently gone on ahead to try and stop whatever plan they have. You hitch up your sleeves and tear your way through seven levels of both the Battlespire itself and several planes of the daedric realms, with only what you brought and what you find on the floor to sustain you.

Like Daggerfall, the game has an extensive character customization option at the start. In addition to just setting attributes, health, and skills, you can pick advantages and disadvantages and starting spells and items. The spells and items bear special attention, as you probably won't replace any of the items until halfway through the game and magic is hard to find in the dungeon, as all the non-quest drops are random. And like Daggerfall before, you can stack some pretty big disadvantages for major points and then erase it all with some good advantages. In this case, giving yourself critical weakness to all magic and then taking spell absorption and stacking willpower (which governs the absorb percentage at a 1:1 ratio) lets you just spam healing and ignoring enemy spellcasters. And unlike every other Elder Scrolls game, in this one hand to hand is extremely viable. So go ahead and forbid yourself every single weapon and punch a lot of bitches in the face. The game remembered to flag the required quest weapons (used to kill two "bosses") as allowed even if you forbid all weapons.

Each level has some sort of task to open the portal to the next one. In general, it involves flipping switches and finding key items to open the end door/portal. The levels themselves are not terribly big, and unlike Daggerfall they don't feel the need to criss cross over themselves like crazy with a map that barely helps you navigate. At this point I'm convinced all the quest dungeons in Daggerfall used the same generation logic, and then the devs placed the key items/NPCs at spots that felt good. By contrast, here you have fairly considered placement of everything, so navigation is reasonable.

But a review of Battlespire wouldn't be complete without talking about how much of a technical mess it is. The first one is something you will definitely run into at some point; going aerial can easily get you stuck on terrain. There's a handful of spots where you need to jump across a gap, and if you don't jump far enough you'll run into the side of the platform and just get stuck and have to reload your save. So not only do you need to have your jumping skill high enough to get the clearance, you need to deal with the terrible jump implementation. You hold down the button, watch a cursor move, then when you're happy with the position release and you'll jump. It's exactly as cumbersome as its sounds, and the only saving grace is that jumping is only for terrain traversal, not combat. Enemies can randomly have their sprites stop showing up, but still fight you. If you kill them they'll respawn as the death animation seems to fix whatever is improperly loaded. And most egregious of all, there is a well documented bug with the fifth level that will corrupt your saves if you keep dying and reloading. Not so much of an issue if you did like me and exploited character gen to basically be a physical god by the time you get to this level, but if you came in using one of the regular classes then you'll want to read up on the mitigations before starting.

All in all, Battlespire is not a game I would recommend to anyone. It is a curiosity of the age, with its biggest contribution being to kickstart the lore of the daedra for the main franchise. If you do decide to pick it up don't go in blind; based on Ack's experience there is a big difference between going in blind and going in with the intent to break the systems in your favor.
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PartridgeSenpai
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Re: Games Beaten 2021

by PartridgeSenpai Mon Nov 29, 2021 6:47 am

Partridge Senpai's 2021 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
* indicates a repeat

Games 1~51
1. Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland (PS3)
2. Portal 2 (PC) *
3. Atelier Judie: The Alchemist of Gramnad (PS2)
4. Pipo Saru 2001 (PS2)
5. Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (N64)
6. Atelier Viorate: The Alchemist of Gramnad 2 (PS2)
7. Kirby's Dream Land 3 (SFC)
8. The Legend of Mystical Ninja (SFC)
9. Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg (PS1)
10. Ganbare Goemon 2 (SFC)
11. Paper Mario: Origami King (Switch)
12. Star Fox 64 (N64) *
13. Super Paper Mario (Wii) *
14. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (GC) *
15. Demon's Crest (SNES)
16. Cathedral (Switch)
17. Super Mario 3D World (Switch) *
18. Bowser's Fury (Switch)
19. Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos (Switch)
20. moon (Switch)
21. Casltevania 64 (N64)
22. Captain Rainbow (Wii)
23. Doraemon: Nobita To Mittsu No Seireiseki (N64)
24. Blast Corps (N64)
25. Doraemon 2: Nobita To Hikari No Shinden (N64)
26. Custom Robo (N64)
27. Doraemon 3: Nobita No Machi SOS! (N64)
28. 64 Trump Collection: Alice No Wakuwaku Trump World (N64)
29. The Sunken City (PS4)
30. Lair of the Clockwork God (Switch)
31. Star Fox Adventures (GC)
32. Atelier Elie: The Alchemist of Salburg 2 (PS1)
33. Billy Hatcher & The Giant Egg (GC)
34. Mole Mania (GB)
35. Gargoyle's Quest (GB)
36. Rock Man 4 (Famicom) *
37. Wai Wai World (Famicom)
38. Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge (GB)
39. Mega Man (Switch) *
40. Mega Man 2 (Switch) *
41. Mega Man 3 (Switch) *
42. Rock Man 5 (Famicom) *
43. Mega Man 6 (Switch)
44. Mega Man 7 (Switch) *
45. Mega Man 8 (Switch) *
46. Mega Man 9 (Switch) *
47. Mega Man 10 (Switch)
48. Rock Man World 2 (GB) *
49. Rock Man World 3 (GB)
50. Rock Man World 4 (GB)
51. Rock Man World 5 (GB)

Games 52~100
52. Wai Wai World 2 (Famicom)
53. Tiny Toon Adventures (Famicom)
54. King Kong 2: Ikari No Megaton Punch (Famicom)
55. Yume Pengin Monogatari (Famicom)
56. Rock Man & Forte (SFC)
57. Rock Man X2 (Switch)
58. Rock Man X3 (Switch)
59. Rock Man X4 (Switch)
60. Rock Man X5 (Switch)
61. Rock Man X6 (Switch)
62. Rock Man X7 (Switch)
63. Rock Man X8 (Switch)
64. Mega Man: Powered Up (PSP)
65. Magical Taruruuto Kun: FANTASTIC WORLD!! (Famicom)
66. Maken Shao (PS2)
67. Getsu Fuuma Den (Famicom)
68. Rock Man D.A.S.H (PSP)
69. Brave Fencer Musashi (PS1)
70. Joe & Mac (SFC) *
71. Atelier Lilie: The Alchemist of Salburg 3 (PS2)
72. Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link (Famicom)
73. The Bouncer (PS2)
74. Rapid Angel (PS1)
75. Atelier Totori: The Alchemist of Arland 2 (PS3)
76. Drakengard 3 (PS3)
77. Alwa's Awakening (Switch)
78. Hermina & Culus (PS2)
79. Atelier Meruru: The Alchemist of Arland 3 (PS3)
80. Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti (Switch)
81. Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana (PS2)
82. Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana 2 (PS2)
83. Mario Kart 64 (N64)
84. Super Mario Kart (SFC)
85. Mario Kart Super Circuit (3DS)
86. Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (N64) *
87. Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (N64) *
88. Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap (3DS) *
89. Rock Man X: Command Mission (GC)
90. Pikmin (GC) *
91. Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures (GC) *
92. Far East of Eden 2: Manjimaru (GC)
93. Pikmin 2 (GC) *
94. Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (GC) *
95. Shin Megami Tensei (SFC)
96. Metroid Prime (GC)
97. Bomberman Jetters (GC)
98. Maximo (PS2)
99. Operation Logic Bomb (SNES)
100. Bombuzal (SFC)

101. Splatterhouse (PCE)
102. Shin Megami Tensei 2 (SFC)
103. Shin Megami Tensei if... (SFC)
104. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner (Saturn)
105. Alundra (PS1)
106. Lunar: Silver Star Story (Saturn)
107. Tales of Xillia (PS3)
108. Digimon Rumble Arena (PS1)
109. Blue Stinger (DC)
110. Clockwork Knight (Saturn)
111. Tales of Xillia 2 (PS3)
112. Nightmare Creatures (PS1)
113. Tales of Rebirth (PSP)
114. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Children: Red Book (GBC)
115. Heart of the Woods (PC)
116. Analogue: A Hate Story (PC)

117. Ibunroku Persona (PS1)

Also known as "Revelations: Persona" in English, this was the next game chronologically in my journey of playing through the early SMT games. Where Devil Summoner keeps SMT If's more grounded setting and stakes while throwing away the spirit guardian system, Persona famously turns the spirit guardians into its titular system and runs with that instead! I usually just put the English title for the games I beat on here that have them, but in this case, the game is so different between Japanese and English that I felt it was more appropriate to put the Japanese title there instead. I played through the Sebek (normal) route, and it took me about 55-ish hours to beat it with the good ending playing a real PS1 disc via my PS3.

Persona 1 (as I'll be calling it from now on for the sake of brevity) follows you, the main character, as well as several of your friends as you all do a ritual after school to try and summon a "Persona" demon. Well it works, and you wind up getting hurt, but only briefly. But after you wake up and go to the hospital to visit your sick friend Maki (who has a chronic illness that keeps her in the hospital a lot), she suddenly has a turn for the worse and while she's in the ICU, the hospital gets all jumbled around and demon filled! From here, things get more and more demon-y until you're forced to make a soft-choice on which of the two main story paths you'll follow. One is the Ice Queen, which is a time-limited quest that follows Yukino (another friend of yours) and was cut out of the American localization of the PS1 version, and then there's the normal Sebek route which follows Maki, and that's the one I took. Your quest with Maki always includes her, yourself, and your friends Mark and Nanjou-kun, but (much like in SMT If, this game's predecessor) you also get a chance to bring along a 5th party member, three of whom are quite easy to get and one who requires a very specific sequence of events to get (and he's the one I got).

Granted I only saw Maki's route, but overall I really enjoyed the writing. This game is still very much a descendant of SMT If more so than it is the previous SMT games, and that can be seen from broader things such as the high school setting to more granular details like the reasons the main bad guy is doing what they're doing. However, the spins they take on those things here evolve those concepts significantly, and it very much feels like a brand new adventure and not some retread.

You're very much a tertiary part of the story, and honestly so are Nanjou-kun, Mark, and your 5th member. The real main character is Maki, and the rest of you are just supporting members of her story. However, that's not a dig at the writing at all. The game does a really good job of making Mark and Nanjou-kun in particular feel like meaningful and fleshed out characters despite the fact that they never really get any sort of character arc. The only real sore thumb of the bunch is you, as you're given front and center attention very often despite mostly not saying much and effectively doing no more than Nanjou-kun or Mark, but you're the main character, so of course you're the most important by default. That's really my only complaint with the writing though (aside from some light transphobia with the people who run the casino, who are very Atlus-brand casual transphobia). Maki's story may be difficult to see the genuine ending of (getting the true ending requires answering some fairly innocuous questions correctly, and it's for prompts like that that I used a guide), but the ride there is full of well-written dialogue that is fun and engaging all the way~.

Where I have more, and it's a LOT more, complaints, is with the mechanics of Persona 1. While SMT If was in many ways a rushed-out mess of a game, with poorly thought out new mechanics stapled onto the skeleton of SMT 2, Persona 1 is a very bold attempt to build on those new systems in a whole new way. However, there is a lot more passion here than polish, as those more developed systems are very often developed without really considering how the rest of the game functions around them. To start off with one of the game's few mechanical silver linings, however, they removed the requirement for guns to have limited ammo, so you can once away blast away to your little heart's content~.

To get down to proper business, though, here's thing from which all other problems arise: The leveling system. It's not the most intuitive place, I know, but it really is the one thing that, if fixed, the rest of the game would benefit massively from. Instead of summoning monsters, SMT-style, you have a party of five members who summon personas made by fusing the monsters you befriend. These five party members have two sets of experience points: points for general levels, and points for persona levels. The prior gives three stat points every level up to assign to five skills just like most SMT games have (although all of your non-main character party members have theirs assigned automatically) as well as dictates what demons you can befriend, as you can't befriend a demon higher than the party's average level. The latter dictates the maximum persona you can have assigned to you, and persona levels are gained by using your personas more in battle instead of normal weapons or guns. That all sounds simple enough, but where it all falls apart is that EXP in both cases is divided out based on who participated the most in battle (which is generally about doing the most damage, but can also be around support spells used).

What this means in practice is that a grindy game gets even grindy-er. There aren't many personas in the game, ultimately, so getting new ones that your character can actually use can be tricky and time consuming as you grind persona levels to just be at a high enough level to use a new persona you've fused (and then you've gotta hope that the character's alignment is the right one to be even able to use the tarot type of that persona, which isn't indicated to the player at all and even the manual just tells you to figure it out via trial and error). Even weak demons can fuse into high-level personas though, so your early game is really brutal because getting new usable personas at all is really tricky even with a lot of demons to fuse. Demons also tend to be much higher level than you, so if you want to recruit new demons to fuse into personas at all, you'll be grinding a LOT to get your party's average level up to even have a chance to recruit the demons you're encountering, as going back to early-game areas is almost always impossible due to story progression.

These problems are bad already, but they're made even worse because of the way EXP is distributed. Powerful characters (be it due to either good weapons, guns, or persona spells) are just going to keep skyrocketing in levels compared to their friends because they're doing all the damage. This is even further compounded by the range system used in the game. This game tries to put a new spin on the two-tiered row system that SMT used by having both your and the enemy's party be on 5x5 grids and having your weapons, guns, and spells all bound by where you're standing on it. Sometimes that means enemies have a harder time hitting you with mean, close-range instant-death spells, but it more often means that due to how the enemies spawned or how they happened to die, one or more characters simply need to wait and defend because none of their attacks are in range to actually hit the enemy. And of course, what game with an annoying range system would be complete without a total lack of information to the player on ANY move or weapon's range capabilities?

The UI overall is pretty awful for 1996, and that's outside of the woefully inadequate weapon and spell information described earlier (although at the very least they tell you what power level and how many times they hit). They don't just let you not compare weapons in shops to what you're currently using, they don't even let you see who can use what item in the shop. They also don't let you look at your current persona level when in the persona fusing Velvet Room, so if you wanna do that, you've gotta go back out and check it, and then go back in and hope you remember (and the same goes for various other persona stats and player stats and such). The shop comparison stuff in particular is absolutely inexcusable for that period in gaming, as it'd been the standard set over five years before, not to mention one actually met by Devil Summoner which had been released a year earlier.

The terrible disrespect for the player's time doesn't end there though. The difficulty curve is terrible, with the first boss easily being one of the hardest in the entire game, and other awful difficulty peaks continuing here and there from that point (particularly if you're going for the good ending, as there's a lot of extra content beyond where the bad ending stops). Dungeons are also quite large even pretty early into the game, and they very rarely have save points anywhere but very close to the start. You do, however, have a constant mini-map instead of having to use the Mapper spell, and they've even made it much larger. However, what that also does is make dungeons effectively navigated entirely by mini-map, and it makes the first-person dungeons feel pretty pointless in general. It's no surprise that this is the only Persona game to have first-person dungeon crawling, as it just works really poorly here. They've also removed dungeon-escape items and your singular save-anywhere item from Devil Summoner, so exploring dungeons is once again far more time consuming and far more dangerous.

Making all of that EVEN WORSE (I realize I say that a lot in this review, but it's worth mentioning every time XP) is that this game suffers from something that tons of early CD-era JRPGs suffer from in how damn long battle animations take. Particularly for persona attacks and enemy animations, battle animations take FAR too long, and battles are far too dangerous to ever safely use the auto-battle command. This means that a game that already has an awful EXP and money grind amplifies that by having battles that can take super long due to their awful difficulty and the animations that take place. This isn't really the hardest SMT game up to this point (that's easily SMT If, which has far more inexcusable crap in it), but it's easily the one that will wear you down the worst with just how miserable the grind in it is.

One of the only more neutral changes to the whole formula is how demon negotiations work in this game compared to previous ones. Where prior games had more of a conversation between you and the demon, now each character has four actions they can do to try and interact with the demon. Each demon has some combination of the game's eight personality traits, and depending on that combo (and also the phase of the moon and also just RNG in general) the monster will get a rise in a different one of four emotions indicated in the upper left of the screen: rage, happiness, terror, and interest. Interest is the one you want if you're trying to recruit them, happiness will often get you free stuff, and terror will often make them flee, but rage will get them more hopping mad to kill you than ever, so you've gotta be careful.

This makes for a system that's not worse or better than the old one so much as it is just different, because the real change it brings to the table is that demon negotiation is FAR more about simple trial and error than it used to be. It's a bastard learning which moves with which characters work to interest which demons, but once you know those things, they'll work virtually every time. You can even do like I did and just get fed up and look up what different monsters respond positively to online, since there's nothing random about a particular demon type's personality distribution, so you can very easily talk your way past really hard enemies if you so choose. It helps give Persona just one more thing to make it stand out from SMT, and it also ultimately makes the game a bit more forgiving and easy in certain ways, but it's still just "different" rather than "better", and it will probably depend on the player for just how much they find this system appealing compared to the traditional way SMT had done things.

With all the mechanical woes, it's nice that at least the presentation, like the writing, is also generally quite nice, even if it is a mixed bag at times. The music is pretty darn good and very funky, with the character themes being particularly good. It's overall not quite as good as Devil Summoner's soundtrack, but it's still got some real boppin' tracks. The only downside is that the encounter rate is SO high in this version of the game that you rarely hear any music in dungeons other than the singular battle theme that they use for every non-boss encounter in the game, and while that song is a pretty good one, it gets old after a while, and the game really could've benefited from some more battle themes. The graphics are VERY pretty though. The dungeons look nice, but the isometric NPC areas are very pretty as well as NPC portraits themselves. The real star of the show is the monster animations, though. Overly long as they may be, they gave a ton of beautiful attention to detail in bringing these monsters from unmoving front-facing sprites to moving isometric enemies, and the love and care put into those sprites and animations were the start of the visual show for me.

The differences between the Japanese original and English localization are numerous and in some cases very infamous. Most notable among the hall of infamy is how they made the character models look "more American" in trying to de-Japan-ify the game, and making certain characters look more white and they even went as far as to make Mark black in the English version. The other notable thing in the Japanese version is that it's an even more grindy mess than the English version because the random encounter rate is *even* higher in this version. Granted both versions still have awful cash flow problems, but that's something that makes this version of the game that much harder to recommend despite it not suffering from all the writing issues the localization has.

Verdict: Not Recommended. Honestly, had I played the Super Famicom SMT games without save states or rewinds, most of them (particularly SMT If) would've been not recommended as well, but this game wouldn't even be saved with save states or rewinds. While I may have enjoyed the story, the mechanical road you need to take to get there is just so damn brutal and grindy that I think most people are going to find it VERY hard to justify the time investment unless they are a HUGE fan of SMT and just have to see the early parts of the series. You're going to need a lot of patience and willingness to put up with old game nonsense to make it through this game's meanness, because it's mean EVEN for an SMT game. I didn't ultimately hate my time with the game, sure, but this is one you better be darn sure you're up for before taking the plunge, because you're going to have a very rough ride otherwise Xp
I identify everyone via avatar, so if you change your avatar, I genuinely might completely forget who you are. -- Me
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