Hero-of-Time

I've got a feeling Jedi Power Battles is gonna be a game I enjoyed as a youngster but will not have aged well at all.

It will be interesting to see how you think both of these hold up now. A friend and I were talking about them the other day (he's currently playing Frontiers and the Adventure games got brought up) and I was saying just how janky and fiddly the controls are when compared to modern day Sonic games. If people have issues with how modern Sonic games control then they should go back and play both of these, just to see how good we have it.

I'm now in the final dungeon but I'm gonna be here for a very long time. I need to farm rare monster drops in order to get every bit of equipment in the game. I've gotta hope that the monster actually drops a chest and then cross my fingers that what I need is inside the thing. I'm one game into my 2025 pledge and I'm already feeling burnt out.

Aye. My magic was as high as it could go (7).

Loving all these pledges. There is a lot of variety from everyone. Speaking of which, thanks to the snow being bad, I've not been able to get into work today and have continued with Secret of Mana. I've just had an absolute slog of a dungeon to get through. The enemies seem to take very little physical damage and that's if I can even hit them. Despite my weapons being as high a level as they can go, the attacks I do seem to miss more than they hit. I'm having to use magic but the MP I have at my disposal is very little. That whole dungeon just seems completely out of balance for what gear and level you have at that point in the game. I'm pretty sure my game glitched on me. I opened a chest to get a sword orb that allows me to raise it one more level but the chest instantly reappeared and gave me another orb. My sword is now 1 level away from being maxed out which is probably slightly earlier than the game intends.

At the end of last year I played Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition. I wasn't that hot on the game and found it a bit lacking. I decided to fire it up again and go for every S Rank to see if this would change my mind about it. Over the past few days I've been slowly chipping away at it. Yeah, doing this really elevated the game and I think much more highly of it now. Some of the S ranks are brutal but there's certainly a rush to finally nailing them. I was having to really nail my actions down in order to shave off milliseconds. Some of the hardest ones for me were the Exitebike ones, mainly because I have always sucked at that game and I had to learn how to properly jump off ramps and stick the landings. Some of the Super Mario Bros. S ranks caused me issues as well. The final one has you going from level 1-1 all the way to 8-4. You have to try and do this in under 7 minutes for the ranking and I had to really concentrate to get this down to the time I needed. 8-3 was always a sticking point, what with the amount of Hammer Bros. kicking about. Kid Icarus was another that caused me some grief. Some of the Easy difficulty stages were actually pretty difficult when going for S ranks, whereas some of the Master difficulty stages weren't that bad. I need to grind a few thousand coins to finish buying the Icons and there are a couple of pins I still need that should unlock tomorrow with the online weekly challenges. I'll then class the game as complete. I still think the NES Remix are better games but I've got a whole new level of respect for this now.

I get what you mean now. I've just got 3 new spells in quick succession. Each time I've had to level up the old ones and then the new ones from scratch. To make matters worse, I'm at a point in the story that requires to find a Sage. Four times I've had to go to the mountain and each time I've been sent somewhere different. This, along with the magic grinding, is a just stupid amount of padding to have been put into a game. I'm honestly baffled by the praise this game has received over the years. I used to work with a guy who always harped on about the game being one of the best JRPGs on the SNES. I'm wondering if it's a game many hold dear to the heart due to the co-op aspect of it?

Disappointing but fair result against Man U. They played really well, whereas we were pretty flat.

That's what a few people are speculating.

Pics of the new joycon have leaked. If true, all those mock ups that have been surfacing over Christmas will probably be pretty close to the final model. Again, if these are real, Nintendo won't be happy that they've been leaked. To be fair though I have little sympathy for them. They've had ample time to announce this thing.

I've actually found the magic is pretty easy to level up. Primm's you can just spam on herself and then rest at an inn. For Popoi, I've just been hanging around the area I mentioned above, using magic to kill enemies and then resting to restore MP. The magic in the game is very OP for bosses. It's pretty much all I've used when tackling them.

I've been playing some more of Secret of Mana this morning. I unlocked traversal on the world map via Flammie the dragon. This has made grinding weapon levels so much easier. Seeing as the weapons level up based on kills, I decided to fly back to the starting area and farm kills there. There's a stretch of map here where there are around 20 enemies who I can one shot. Weapon levels are now flying up. Also, I was under the impression that you needed to land a hit to score some exp. This isn't the case at all. You get less than you would if you did land a hit but at least you get something. It means the AI is still getting some gains during this farming. I'm gonna hang around this area until everything is maxed out as far as it can go and then get back to the story.

No game needs trophies/achievements. I just prefer them when they do.

If I want the platinum, yeah it does.

Here's a nice article from Push Square that highlights some lesser known games heading to PS platforms this year. https://www.pushsquare.com/features/34-under-the-radar-ps5-games-to-watch-out-for-in-2025

I decided to have a crack at the free Hidden World DLC and was very glad I did. It's a much better experience than the actual main game. It offers 10 stages to play through but they are far more challenging than the main game. You also unlock another mode which makes each of the 10 stages even more difficulty. Kinda remind me of the K stages in Donkey Kong Country Returns. The developers were a bit lacking with the trophies though. The in game achievements for the DLC are plentiful but they clearly couldn't be bothered to convert them to trophies and just offered one for playing one of the stages and another for getting 100% on the DLC. Lazy bums. @drahkon did you have a go at it? I've still been making my way through Secret of Mana and came across this fella today. Never in a million years did I expect to be fighting Santa. Given the rest of the game, it kinda adds up. It's very quirky. I mean, I have no idea what this guy is doing but just look at him go! The game is very much made for people who don't mind grinding. Every time you get a new weapon upgrade or a new spell then you have to spend a fair amount of time using them on enemies in order to level them up. This needs to be done with all 3 characters and so it can turn into a bit of a slog. If it's even wearing me down then you know the grinding that's needed is a little excessive.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was finding with them. Prices are a little higher than other places but stuff that is out of stock elsewhere they seem to have. Certainly one to keep in my mind.

Glad you enjoyed Sayonara Wild Hearts. I love that game. I played it a few years back and enjoyed playing it but the game and my enjoyment was elevated even further when going for the platinum/gold times. As you mentioned, the OST is awesome and I often listen to it at work.

Yeah, that's the site/shop I was looking on over at eBay. I was checking it out the other day as well when comtemplating picking up Power Rangers Year One.

Nah. That's Year Zero, which is a prequel and widely available.Thanks for checking though.

Yeah. It's very much like Mega Man, Shovel Knight and Duck Tales.

Injustice Year Five arrived today and just finished reading it. I thought this final volume would wrap everything up. Nope. The next set of events are what occurs in the first game. I thought they would be covered here but they weren't and instead they were released as Injustice: Ground Zero comics. Two TPBs were released that pulled all of the comics together but they seem to be hard to get a hold of, especially the second volume. Neither are available on Amazon. It's stuff like this why I backed away from the comic book scene. Sigh.

I honestly can't remember. I had a quick look at my trophies and it only took a couple of days to platinum and so I can't imagine the collectibles being much of an issue. Just remember that you can power up Bat Boy. This is something I didn't realise early on and it made the game harder than it needed to be.

Yeah, I'm the same. I used to rate the first film very highly but after you know what it is they are dealing with, the film loses a lot of its appeal and I just end up feeling bored every time I've watched it again. The only issue I have with Resurrection is the design of the alien at the end. Other than that, I find it quite enjoyable and I love the banter between all the crew members. Ron Pearlman really hams it up and shines in this movie.

Both are great although Astalon is much more of a time sink, what with it being a Metroidvania type of game. Out of the two I think Bat Boy is the better game. It's a much breezier experience.