Forums

Finished a few games over the past several days. With the sequels dropping on Premium, I decided to play the first game again and in doing so nab another platinum. I played through it earlier in the year but figured I would cross it off my double platinum list. I played through the original game last year and it was a decent, chilled out experience. This dropped on PS+ and I gave it a whirl. It was pretty cool seeing a lot of the characters make a return to the coffee shop for a brew. I also can't believe they kept the trophy/achievement from the first game where you have to leave a latte sitting for an hour.  Another Cotton game was on sale which meant I had to pick it up. There are two more available for me to buy but one of them has a broken trophy list which doesn't seem like it's ever getting fixed and so I won't be touching it. This verson of the game gives you multiple characters to control. You pick your team of fairies and witches and when one of them is defeated the other takes its place. You can also swap them on the fly, providing you have enough power ups to do so. You can use this to great effect when a shot is heading your way. By switching out at the right time your characters become invincible. They also play slightly differently, with each of them using a different style of firing projectiles. It was another fun and breezy adventure. This was a doozy and ended up really surprising me. I picked it up during the TGS sale on PSN and have been waiting for the right time to play it. Having plenty of time off over Christmas meant that time was now. There are so many systems to get to grips within the game that it can be very overwhelming to begin with. Levelling up is done by doing jobs and earning gold but you can only do jobs if you have enough stamina. To regain your stamina you need to use facilities, such as having a beer in the tavern or a soak in the hot springs. These things cost money though and so a delicate balance of doing jobs, relaxing and earning money needs to be struck.  You can earn quests to tackle by talking to villagers. These play out very similar to Miitopia. Your team automatically walks through the level and then you take control when an enemy is encountered. From there it's a typical JRPG set up with a little twist in the battle system. Standard attacks are pretty much useless and you are really required to use your special moves. This is where the CCC system comes into play - CHANGE, CHAIN, CHANCE. You can change the status of the enemy by say using a fire attack, you can then cause a chain to happen by using a water attack. Finally, a chance is created once you get a chain higher than one. At any point you can end this chain but if you keep switching between attacks and getting the chain to 10, you will be doing some stupid damage. Another thing that features in the quest is a stamina system. You can load up with food before you set out but certain foods will spoil very quickly if they are in an area that they aren't meant to be in. For example, taking things meant for frozen maps to a volcano area ain't a good idea. The stamina needs to be managed well otherwise you will fail the quest. The game features a job system. Now, usually I don't care for these but I didn't mind how it was set up here. Each of your team members has a set job (2 sub jobs can be unlocked later) and there's only the main character who can switch between different ones. This makes it very manageable to create some very useful team compositions. Anyone who enjoys job systems in JRPGs will get a kick out of it. The platinum took some doing, with me needing to put 50 hours into the game to obtain it. The last couple of quests to get the real ending aren't for the faint hearted. I pretty much had to max out my perfect team and even then it was pretty difficult. It was hard to come be information, given that not many people seem to have played the game. There is very little out there in terms of best teams/characters to use. There were only a handful of Reddit posts that ended up being pretty helpful. I really enjoyed the game, far more than I thought I would. I will say though that there is a lot of grinding in it. Money is the key to levelling up and by doing various things and managing your time and jobs well, you will end up earning a lot of cash pretty fast. However, it still takes a lot of grinding, even when you do get to grips with every system the game throws at you. Luckily for me, I love repeatative actions in games that allow me to see my stats keep going up. It's very much a game made for me.

Forgot to bring it up, but Jones was back once again at Easy Allies for TGA reactions, and both Kyle and Jones were part of that week's main podcast:  Wouldn't say they're quite as all-timer as last year's equivalents, but man, I just miss listening to these guys.  I don't really listen to EZA as a podcast anymore - at least the current stuff. Feel like I just cycle back through older episodes of the main podcast and Frame Trap, and recently for around to listening back to the Frame Trap episodes released from lockdown onwards, something I'd dodged doing for a very long time purely because of, well, it being a reminder of such a strange time. I'm also currently watching through Hall of Greats (again), and man, I miss the glory days. The Trial of Kyle Bosman is also S-tier  Which brings me to today, when I finally got around to watching most of their deliberations for 2023, what with the end of the year now upon us.  I've still got the GOTY discussion to go, but man, I'm shocked that so many of the Allies just straight up skipped some of the strongest GOTY candidates last year, namely Baldur's Gate III. It wouldn't be my pick (based on having only played it in co-op, mind you), but to only have Gabby and Isla beat it and the others to just have thrown in a few hours, when it came out in August/September (depending on your platform), AND considering the fact that they still held their deliberations later than everyone else...I'm at a total loss. I get that they can't play everything, but I had the winner spoiler for me in the comments and am not surprised at all given who is left and who does and does not want to cause a stir during these things, and it's weird to think that a couple of years prior with Brad and Ben present, it's obvious they would've played BG3 and it probably would've won. Similar to how I think Endwalker would've won in 2021 if Ben had actually finished it.  Oh well, guess I can only hope that things are handled differently this time next month, if they are planning on holding these deliberations once again  it's tough for me because the people my taste most aligned with (Ben and Brad) have long since left, and they were kind of the counterbalances to a lot of the other Allies not getting through as many of the games they probably should've played. Very curious to see how it pans out, in any case. It also seems - from the comments, at least - that Don got shafted, which sucks. 

Nah. I'll just stick to firing it up when there are platinum points available for it.

Any response from the clouds you're yelling at, old man? I ask because you sound like me when I go on Pokémon Unite. As for F-Zero 99, you're stuck with whatever's in rotation and the unlocks take care of themselves based on how you race/what mode you race/both.  The current three lap, 9-race world tour is fun when it comes up. I'm hoping to make it through all nine races before long...