Hero-of-Time

I've settled on my 2025 Gaming Pledge games. It's quite an ambitious list as a lot of these games are quite lengthy. I'll be happy to get through half of them. Dragon Quest Heroes II - After finishing DQ3, I still have the itch for a Dragon Quest game. I adored the first game but never got around to playing the sequel. Now is the time. Dragon's Crown Pro - This is one I started YEARS ago on my Vita. I think I only played an hour or so on it. Grandia HD Collection - I've never played Grandia from start to finish. I dabbled with it a few years back and played the opening segment but that was it. Judgment - This is another one that I started but never finished. I dropped it after get a bit sick of the tailing missions. This is one where I will need to pick up from my old save. I went through the hassle of beating the Puyo Puyo challenges and there's no way I'm going through that hell again! Resident Evil Revelations 2 - Julius playing through the Resident Evil Remake got me thinking how I have never played through this game. I think it's the only mainline Resi game that I have never played. Possibly keep this one for October time. Secret of Mana - This is a game I have tried many times to get into. I'm always put off by the battle system. I fired it up on the PS4 yesterday evening (first time playing this version) and played a little bit of it and have started to get to grips with the systems. Plenty of grinding has been done so far. Tales of Vesperia - Another one that has been on the backlog for years. It requires multiple playthroughs and so I've always put off starting it until I had more time. Trails from Zero - This is my one PlayStation pledge that was left over from last year. I'll attempt it again this year. Wild Arms 2 - Love the first game in the series but I've got around to playing the second. It was never released in this country during the PS1 days and so I never got to play it back in the day. Okami HD - The announcement of the sequel got me thinking how I've had this sat in my backlog but have yet to play the thing. I actually also owned it on the Wii but never played it on that either. As for other gaming goals, I've been thinking more and more about getting rid of some of my older games. I have a bunch of retro games sitting on the shelf that has now been re-released. Things like Pikmin 1 and 2, Baten Kaitos and Metroid Prime all have newer versions, the NSO takes care on my N64 needs and PS+ Classics has started to build up a healthy collection of games. In 2024 I played a couple of Gamecube games that I hadn't touched in 20 years. It was fun playing them again but if I wait another 20 years before playing them again I'll be in my 60's...or even dead. Plus, I do enjoy the QoL features that the modern releases offer, such as save states and rewind. I started getting rid of some of my Dreamcast stuff last year and this year it may be time to start thinning out the old Nintendo collection. I have an attachment to them so it's going to be hard to do but I imagine once I sell the first few games the process will be easier. A lot of my N64 collection is worth quite a bit so I should at least make some decent cash from it all.

Now that I'm back at work, I can now go through my Excel sheet and crunch the numbers. In 2024 I played and completed... 61 PS4 games 54 PS5 games 31 Switch games 2 Gamecube games 1 DS game 1 PS1 game One thing I wanted to do this year was start taking advantage of games on PS+ and NSO. I have both of these services and it's pointless having them if I'm not going to play any of the games that are on offer. This being the case I ended up with... 48 PS+ games being played 13 NSO games being played Another thing I wanted to do was avoid paying full price for games on the PlayStation. The price of a lot of new releases on the PS5/PS4 is just ridiculous. I actually managed to pull this off. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was bought with vouchers that I saved after Christmas and Astro Bot was bought with Nectar points that I had saved up. Every other 2024 release I bought when on sale. Nintendo games were still bought at launch due to them never really dropping in price and with them being still being a reasonable £40. I did end up still buying a lot of games... 62 games were bought this year 46 of these were finished Not a bad going. A lot of the ones I didn't finish were games I picked because they were on sale but never got around to actually starting. As for my 2024 pledges... I didn't finish them all but did knock out... The Outer Wilds Nioh 2 The last Guardian Ys IX Mario and Rabbids: Sparks of Hope Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity Splatoon 2 + DLC I started the other 3 games ( Tokyo Mirage Sessions, Astral Chain and Trails of Zero ) but ended up dropping them. Astral Chain and TMS I have tried multiple times now to get through but I just can't do it. Trails of Zero I got a few hours in but dropped it. I need a big chunk of time to get through that one as it will require a bit of planning and multiple playthroughs.

I just assumed @Dcubedwas going with this option.

What if there are no improvements?

This month's games.

First platinum of 2025 has been obtained. I was actually hoping to have this finished yesterday but I ran out of time. This is still probably my least favourite Dragon Quest game. The game looks gorgeous with the 2D HD look but gameplay wise it still falls short of the other games. Also, the new dungeon they added to this version was such a meh experience. They could have done something much better than what they gave us. My thoughts on the game haven't really changed from when I played the older version on Switch a few years back. I had a nightmare with the Mini Medals. I finished everything in the game but I was missing 1 medal. I used a guide to try and find out which one I missed, only to see the guide I was using was incomplete. I rang in the New Year looking for this final medal but my efforts were fruitless. Fired the game up this morning and used a different guide this time. Still took a while to find it but I was very happy when it finally showed up.

It reminds me a little of the Age of Apocalypse, probably why I like it. I often like alternative reality stories. Its like the mirror universe episodes of DS9. They get slated by fans but I really enjoy them as well.

Completely burnt out with gaming at the moment and so I have spent this afternoon/evening reading some TPBs. Sat and read through Flashpoint and I'm now reading Injustice. I forgot how good both of these are, especially Injustice.

It's so frustrating. I could understand the boards reluctance if these guys weren't performing well but they playing better than ever. Gonna be a massive fail if all 3 players go on the free.

Another fantastic result for us today. Give the men their contracts!!!!

Finally got around to playing and finishing Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition. Yeah, it's pretty rubbish and not a patch on the NES Remix games. A lot of the challenges are ridiculously short, like 1-2 seconds long. You get ranks for your performance, with S rank being the highest, but there isn't much incentive to push yourself to get those because all the unlockables are unlocked by get A ranks. The argument could be made that getting S ranks will dish out more coins (used to by icons and pins) but it's far more lucrative to just find a 1 second challenge and do that over and over to farm the coins needed. Very disappointing game and I can see why it came and went without much fanfare.

It's great that they are rotating old sets again. Pretty sure I'm caught up with most of them now.

I see Andy Kubert is the artist on that. Loved his art work when he drew the X-Men comic in the 90s. Thanks for the recommendation. I may have to check it out.

With The Last Guardian done, I was looking for something a little more relaxing. There was a thread on Era about games that are like DKC and this one popped up in the conversation. I remember Aneres11 enjoying when he played it are a while ago and seeing as it was on sale for £1.59, I figured I would give it a punt. It was okay. It's very much a rip off of DKC Returns. The boss designs, look of the levels, world map and rolling move have been completely nicked from DKCR. Its so blatant. The first couple of worlds are stupidly easy but then things ramp up in the third. Turns out the third world was the final one. I was kinda baffled by this. It feels like the game is missing a whole middle section. It's as if the developers completely ran out of time and quickly cobbled together something. This definitely seems to be the case when you consider free DLC was added that gave players a whole new world to play through.

This is a game I've been wanting to play for a while and one that is on my 2024 pledge list. I've tried a couple of times to get into this, only putting around half an hour into the game each time I've attempted to play it, but this week was the week I finally sat down and played through it properly. It's a very frustrating game. The control scheme goes against every other game that you've played, well apart from Team Ico's other stuff, and I'm not sure why they keep doing this. I was half tempted to change things to how I like them by using the PS5s ability to customise your controls but I decided to persevere. Another point of frustration is the AI of Trico. Yeah, it can sometimes be very clever but other times it will simply not do what you want it to do. There were a few times where I had to reload the checkpoint in order for the right action to kick in. This also occurred in two big puzzle points. One involved using a box on the water and having Trico drop his tail for me to climb. This never happened. Another was when using a cart to catapult the main character up to the ceiling. Trico would constantly faff around with the cart, moving it out of position, causing me to reset the whole thing. Despite these frustrations, I did end up enjoying the game a great deal. Perseverance was the key and once I got the hang of the controls and how Trico moves and responds to calls, things went more smoothly. The game is still a looker after all these years. This picture I took sums up how amazing and magical the games visuals are. I also love the animations in the game. The way the main character moves and gestures is adorable. I especially love his little run down the stairs. Here's a quick video of me wearing the gear from Ico and doing the funny run. The platinum was very hard work and I can see why it has such a low percentage (0.3% completion rate). There's a trophy for listening to all of the secret hints. There are over 90 of these and getting them to trigger can be a hit or miss affair. You have to collect all 48 barrels but this is a little misleading because you need 96 in order to unlock the trophy for spray painting Trico. This means a few playthroughs are needed. There's another for finishing the game under 5 hours. Finally, another two toughies were to finish the game without dying and to finish the game whilst removing any spears as quick as possible when Trico is hit. All crazy stuff. I decided to do a standard run through the game first. I then went for the no death and under 5 hours trophies, before finally doing a third run that had me collect the remaining barrels I needed to unlock the paint gun. It took many years to get around to playing it but it's finally done. I think I still enjoyed SotC more but that doesn't really take anything away from this game. What a wonderfully unique experience it was.