What are you playing?

[BogusMeatFactory]

Yeah Tropical Freeze should never be played co-op. The difficulty becomes unbearable. As a solo experience. it is perfection however and may be my favorite platformer of all time.... and I don't enjoy the Donkey Kong Country games very much.

I will also second Partridge's sentiment in Yoshi's Wooley World. It is such a delightful platformer that definitely ramps up the challenge as you progress. My wife and I co-oped our way through it and had an a absolute blast.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Yeah Tropical Freeze should never be played co-op. The difficulty becomes unbearable. As a solo experience. it is perfection however and may be my favorite platformer of all time.... and I don't enjoy the Donkey Kong Country games very much.

I played through it with my girlfriend after they gave it out for free as one of the rewards when Club Nintendo ended, and whenever stuff got too hard, she just hopped on my back until we could get past the difficult bit. I also played through the extra bonus stages and last world by myself, because I don't think that stuff is possible alone Xp

I will also second Partridge's sentiment in Yoshi's Wooley World. It is such a delightful platformer that definitely ramps up the challenge as you progress. My wife and I co-oped our way through it and had an a absolute blast.

Apparently Good-Feel is making the new Yoshi Switch game! I wasn't so hot on the E3 trailer they showed of it compared to the new Kirby game, but if they're behind it, I'm sure it'll be good

[Xeogred]

Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker and Wooley World are the next WiiU games I plan to get.

Yoshi's Island is incredible but just about the only main Yoshi game I really like, though enough people here sold me on the fact that Wooley World seems to finally be the worthy successor and sequel to that. Those dang Nintendo prices hold me back sometimes though, but I will get it!

[BoneSnapDeez]

My personal favorite 1500 games:

How many other "budget" series are out there?

There's the Sega Ages 2500 Series, which includes the great Phantasy Star remakes, among other games.

The Oretachi Gēsen Zoku series had ports of classic arcade games, including what I think is the only home version of Haunted Castle.

Hilariously, so many of these games are now exponentially more expensive than their list price.

I like that set of cheap A1/Agetec games for PSX; those were actually released in the U.S.

[Exhuminator]

How many other "budget" series are out there?

I have no idea. I was only interested in the Simple series because of how esoteric many of the game concepts were. For example earlier today I found a remote control submarine simulator on PS1:



Crazy stuff like that is why I care about the series.

[Xeogred]

A few hours into Yakuza 0 and as predicted it's more than likely a 10/10.

So far, this one feels noticeably darker in a cool way. It's awesome seeing a young brash Kiryu too. I had a hunch it would be straight serious business in a time without Haruka (I think she's awesome in the later ones though). It's especially cool jumping into this game after playing Yakuza 4 earlier this year, so the engine upgrade is extremely noticeable and looks fantastic. Even more exciting is knowing that Yakuza 6 and Kiwami 2 get another upgraded engine too.

The style/stance thing is an interesting change and the sphere grid skill upgrade thing is cool too. Wasn't a fan of Yakuza 3's level up system, it was fine in 4, but this seems way better than both.

It takes place in 1988, it doesn't lean too heavily into the 80's vibes... but it's definitely there in the corners at times. At one of the gas stations and magazine racks, I saw Leiji Matsumoto name dropped, a shonen cover with Joseph Joestar, a Famicom magazine, and some other stuff I couldn't recognize. It'll be cool to see more pop culture references I might be able to pick out being a huge fan of 80's anime and such.

[PartridgeSenpai]

I'm not sure how fluffy 3 and 4's stories are, but I wouldn't call 1 and 2's stories dark so much as I would call them serious. 1 especially, as it has the least "playing Outrun at the arcade"-style silly sidequests and distraction activities out of any of them, focuses all in on its story, and it feels like a high-tension Yakuza-thriller quite often (as that's exactly the vibe they're going for, I would imagine). 2 especially starts going pretty silly and over the top with the tiger fights, but damn that game has some awesomely tense moments in it. Cool to hear they change up the leveling system though, because they basically just have the leveling system from 2 in place in Yakuza 2.5 (aka Kanzen), and that's gettin' kinda old, tbh. Only another 5 or so games until I get to Zero to where I can actually use it I guess

[strangenova]

A few hours into Yakuza 0 and as predicted it's more than likely a 10/10.

Hope you've got some time on your hands, I'm 98 hours in and just got to the final chapter. I've got about twenty side quests left to do and around 70% of the completion points earned. It definitely is a 10/10

[Xeogred]

DUDE, you're crazy. Not going to lie but I kind of just blast through the main story in these games. I'll do some side stuff but I don't worry about it too much haha. I guess I only have Yakuza 4 on my HowLongToBeat profile but I beat that one in 22 hours, think 3 was about the same. I'm thinking probably ~30-40 for me in Zero.

About to hit 7 hours in chapter 2 already though, so who knows. The side quests have been hilarious and awesome. That's awesome you're getting the max out of Yakuza though. Very easy to see how people can get 100 some hours out of these. You going for the platinum? It has an insane Ultra Rare 0.4 percentage when I looked at it haha.

I'm not sure how fluffy 3 and 4's stories are, but I wouldn't call 1 and 2's stories dark so much as I would call them serious. 1 especially, as it has the least "playing Outrun at the arcade"-style silly sidequests and distraction activities out of any of them, focuses all in on its story, and it feels like a high-tension Yakuza-thriller quite often (as that's exactly the vibe they're going for, I would imagine). 2 especially starts going pretty silly and over the top with the tiger fights, but damn that game has some awesomely tense moments in it. Cool to hear they change up the leveling system though, because they basically just have the leveling system from 2 in place in Yakuza 2.5 (aka Kanzen), and that's gettin' kinda old, tbh. Only another 5 or so games until I get to Zero to where I can actually use it I guess

I guess sometimes the way I use "darker" or "serious" is kind of interchangeable, but yeah. 3-4 could get heavy but still had the humor and could switch gears instantly. Zero seems the same too after doing some side stuff and other things. But I do think ultimately it just has a different kind of vibe in ways a little bit because of Kiryu's rookie position here, it feels a bit more rough and rugged in a cool way if that makes sense. Kiryu kind of feels like this untouchable God type in 3-4 (especially 4 with how hilariously he's shoehorned into the story, not that I mind though!), plus he has so many powerful friends and connections. So it's really cool to be in the shoes of young Kiryu with all that stripped away and not in place yet. It makes you feel more fragile and unsafe.

I'm weirdly missing Haruka though haha. And I'm not sure what she's like in 1-2 since she's really young in those. It'll be interesting to see how she matures in 5-6 as well.

Not the biggest spoiler at all or anything, but it's already been cool to see some revelations like why the orphan thing is so important to Kiryu. It will forever be a mess with how I started with 3 and have continued to jump around the series in a weird order, but I think it will work out for me in the end. It would be ideal if we do get Kiwami 2 that I'll try and wait on 6 until I play that one. Zero, Kiwami, Kiwami 2, 5, and 6 should be the ideal order from here for me. But I'm sure it will be tempting to hit up 6 with it on the horizon and it will probably be epic haha. Maybe it'll have the cutscenes/recaps of all the previous games, like 3 and 4 did. So I was able to digest 1-2's story a little bit, but admittedly it doesn't really sink in just watching the cutscenes out of context.

[strangenova]

I'm not intentionally trying to platinum the game. I just got sucked into this world. Honestly I probably won't get much more side stuff done before I finish the story. A lot of the completion points I still need are the minigame points, and as much as I like some of these minigames I'm not hard up on trying to "complete" them.