Games Beaten 2017

[Exhuminator]

FILTHY CASUAL

I am the most casual gamer on this board, everyone knows that.

Now please excuse me while I go install Xanadu Next.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Now please excuse me while I go install Xanadu Next.

Are you kidding me?! You haven't even beaten Romancia yet!

[Exhuminator]

A friendly reminder; you said the first console game you would beat, once you got your new gaming room going, is Shadow Tower Abyss. I'm holding you to that, still.

[prfsnl_gmr]

A friendly reminder; you said the first console game you would beat, once you got your new gaming room going, is Shadow Tower Abyss. I'm holding you to that, still.

This is true. At the rate I am going, however, it may be months before I have it up and running...

Right now, I only have three consoles hooked up in our movie room...a PS3, a Wii U, and an Xbox 360. My copy of Shadow Tower Abyss is sitting in the "under construction (eventually)" gaming room...right on top of my PS2...tormenting me before I am even able to play it.

[Xeogred]

S+ rank for all that Brandish art and screens. Not sure if it's for me... but it looks compelling.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Nice to see someone else getting into Brandish. Really underappreciated games. I just picked up the PCE port of the first one. Cool review, Xumy. Falcom is king.

Brandish 2 never received an official English release. But a fan translation is available:

http://www.romhacking.net/translations/1442/

Do you know whether the expert version received an English translation? If so, that is the version I am going to play.

Both Ys V and Brandish 2 have "Expert" carts, but neither one has a fan translation.

Now, Ys V is a painfully easy game, so the addition of an "Expert" version made some sense. No idea why they made one for Brandish 2!

[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

And finally finished Dawn of War II. I'm definitely happy they're going back to the RTS style for DoW3, since I think that ends up being more fun. Retribution is the stand alone expansion to DoW2 and it's set after the ending of Chaos Rising. This time you get to play as one of six races, though unlike Winter Assault from DoW there's no material difference between the campaigns. You spend the campaign following around Kyras for various reasons depending on faction and eventually have to kill him after he starts to ascend to daemonhood (because we need a boss fight in an RTS).

Unlike the other DoW2 games this one actually gives you the ability to build units mid mission. This might be how things go down in multiplayer so it wouldn't be new to DoW2, but it is new to the campaign. You gain resources mostly from drops and then use those to summon units from capturable structures. If a unit dies its cost gets refunded. If a unit loses some of its soldiers you can reinforce them at the cost of some resources, but these will NOT be refunded on total unit death, so I found it ended up being a trap (with the exception of the hero substitutes which deploy and reinforce for free).

The hero building is streamlined compared to the other DoW2 games. The game actually doesn't have very many missions (at most as many as Chaos Rising) and they aren't really fleshed out. So instead of having a lot of points to put into your heroes with perks every so often you just always take a perk on level. It's basically how the skill system transitioned between Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. One thing that I liked was you can choose to not take your heroes along with you on a map (aside from the faction leader). In that case you instead get an honor guard unit which is a tougher version of a normal unit with all the upgrades. It also adds to your supply cap and they can be upgraded by perks from the hero being replaced. If you're not planning on furiously microing your heroes this is probably the way to go. The final thing the game does differently is at the end of a mission you get a choice of rewards; this tends to be either a piece of gear or unlocking a unit/upgrading a unit. You don't have enough missions to unlock all units, so pick a few and focus on those.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Partridge Senpai's 2017 Beaten Games:

1. Tales of Hearts R (Vita)

2. UPPERS (Vita)

Finished this last night. I bought this on the premise that the focus of the game was very silly, but I ended up enjoying it far more than I ever thought I would. For reference, I beat every level on normal, and just about every level on hard (except the really mental final few), and clocked in a little under 23 hours.

The main premise of the game is big muscley guys beating up other big muscley guys to impress girls. The main character of the game, Ranma, wants to become the strongest guy on Last Resort Island so he can date the current head honcho's really hot daughter. There's also some other stuff about him finding out about his father whom he never really knew, but that's the slightly more serious element of the plot. This game is ecchi as fuck, and it totally revels in it. There are cutscenes with each "Queen" (the main girls whom you're trying to impress), that are solely about showing off their bodies in certain poses. If you do certain moves near packs of girls in stages, you'll initiate "panty slots" where their skirts fly up and you see if they're related in some theme of 3 to try and get bonuses to health, voltage, etc. Them, and most other girls whose requests you fulfill in levels get added to a database where you can poke at them (on the touch screen, literally) to make them blush and cover their crotches, you can shake the Vita to make their boobs jiggle, it's ridiculous. I really only spent a very little bit of time in that area, as I found it, got a good laugh, and then went on to the meat of the game: 3D Brawling.

The main meat of the game is a really fun spectacle fighter of a 3D brawler. You have light attacks, strong attacks, grapples, as well as a focused auto dodge you can turn on to try and dish out counters to enemy punches, but that takes a while to get used to the timing to (which matters a LOT in boss battles). There's also "voltage" which builds up as you complete requests and win rounds of panty-slots which makes your attacks fling enemies further and deal more damage. You can also press down on the D-pad to "Rise-Up," and make your combos a lot harder to break, dish out attacks quicker, and also initiate quick-time events of button mashing to deal a bunch of extra damage. It's all a real spectacle to watch too, so the brawling was always super satisfying.

There are 12 characters you'll unlock, all of whom have varried fighting styles that legitimately make them play differently, as well as different movement speeds, defensive and offensive powers, the works. My favorite was of course the luchador Max, both because he says a lot of silly English phrases in Japanese ("KISS MY BOOTS!, THIS IS PRO-WRESTLER!," etc.) and because he can tank and deal out hits like a boss (he's just a bit slow). The normal mode provided a good primer, and the hard modes really make the enemies start gunning for your jugulars, so they made it a right fun romp as well.

Trying to get the highest scores in each stages were my favorite part though. As previously mentioned, there are packs of girls in each stage with requests to fulfill. These can range from knocking out however many enemies to dealing out so many "rush" finishes during a "rise up" period. You have to complete these events within the proximity of the packs of girls though, forcing you to fight in areas you otherwise might not, and to focus on objecives or fighting styles you might not otherwise consider. It really varried up the gameplay, and was definitley my favorite part of the game's formula.

That, however, is my concern in recommending it for importing, as this game only came out in Japan. You're not missing anything significant not being able to read the story, but not being able to tell what the girls are telling you to do in their requests would really dampen the experience. Unless you're just good with the titties and spectacle brawling, the 50+ bucks you'll have to shell out for this might be a bit too steep for most English Vita/ecchi enthusiasts.

Verdict: Recommended. It's a great 3D brawler, and definitely the most fun I've had in a spectacle fighter. I've played games like Metal Gear Revengence and God Hand before, and while I thought they were fun, I thought they were far too punishing to hold my attention for long (though I did beat God Hand). This is a game I enjoyed immensely, and other Vita and/or brawler fans would do well to look into it

[Exhuminator]

Does Ares actually get to bust some planets?

I'm tempted to answer this question, but I'd hate to ruin it for all the other gamers rushing out to play Brandish 2 now.

This is true. At the rate I am going, however, it may be months before I have it up and running...

Don't feel too bad. My wife and I moved into this house back in October, here it is January and my new dork cave is still out of commission. It's only a room full of packed cardboard boxes right now. I've just been too damned lazy to get it together.

S+ rank for all that Brandish art and screens. Not sure if it's for me... but it looks compelling.

Thanks. You might enjoy Brandish 2, I don't know. You loved the Souls games, and those are supposed to be hard real-time dungeon crawlers aren't they? That's in the same vein as Brandish I think.

Cool review, Xumy. Falcom is king.

Thanks. And yes, Falcom is definitely king in the genres they choose. The Brandish games are the best overhead dungeon crawlers I've played by a mile. Keep in mind, I don't consider the Ys games in that category. So the Ys games are still the best action-RPGs I've played.

Now, Ys V is a painfully easy game, so the addition of an "Expert" version made some sense. No idea why they made one for Brandish 2!

Precisely. The whole time I was playing through Ys V, I was like; "Yeah I definitely understand why there's an Expert version for this." But with Brandish 2 I was like; "Who the hell wants this game to be harder than it already is?! Just go stick some rusty nails in your urethra and be done with it!"

BTW Bone, I meant to tell you, another Lunatic Dawn recently got a full English translation:

http://www.romhacking.net/translations/2591/

It was a different team than the one behind this one:

http://www.romhacking.net/translations/2585/

[BoneSnapDeez]

Thanks for the links dawg. I was aware of one of those patches, but not the newest one.