Your 2025 Gaming Diary

[Hero-of-Time]

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.

[Glen-i]

11 minutes ago, Julius said:

Sayonara Wild Hearts,

That ain't the Simogo game I was referring to in the other thread...

But yeah, utterly agree. It's a very cool take on the rhythm(?) genre. I enjoyed it so much that I went for Lorelei and the Laser Eyes pretty much day 1, even if they play nothing alike. That's how much faith I had.

[Hero-of-Time]

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.

[Glen-i]

2 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

This needs to be done with all 3 characters

Does it, though? I would just dedicate a particular weapon to one character (Knuckles on Girl, Lance on Sprite, etc). And as long as you swap them around when they reach the level cap, just fighting stuff along the way will do the job. The only thing I would say is that Randy absolutely should have the Sword. Trust me on this.

The spells, on the other hand, yeah, that needs a lot of grinding. Especially on single player, because the AI is uber dumb, at least Randy can't learn any spells, so you don't have to worry about him on the magic front.

Edited Saturday at 10:06 PM by Glen-i

[Hero-of-Time]

12 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

Does it, though?

If I want the platinum, yeah it does.

[Glen-i]

20 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

If I want the platinum, yeah it does.

Making a good case there for why old SNES RPG's don't need achievements.
I really don't recommend that, but that's not gonna stop you.

[Hero-of-Time]

1 minute ago, Glen-i said:

Making a good case there for why old SNES RPG's don't need achievements.

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

[Hero-of-Time]

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.

[Dcubed]

Yeah… levelling up the magic is a must unfortunately.  You can get away without levelling up all the weapons, but the magic? No, you absolutely need it towards the end game; and levelling up the magic unfortunately suuuuuuuuuucccckkksss, even harder than levelling up the weapons.

[Hero-of-Time]

5 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

Yeah… levelling up the magic is a must unfortunately.  You can get away without levelling up all the weapons, but the magic? No, you absolutely need it towards the end game; and levelling up the magic unfortunately suuuuuuuuuucccckkksss, even harder than levelling up the weapons.

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.

[drahkon]

17 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

@drahkon did you have a go at it?

Nah.
Decided to be done with it after the main game.

But it's nice to hear that the bonus levels are great.

[Hero-of-Time]

10 hours ago, Dcubed said:

No, you absolutely need it towards the end game; and levelling up the magic unfortunately suuuuuuuuuucccckkksss, even harder than levelling up the weapons.

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?

[Dcubed]

I do still like SoM (especially in co-op), but yeah.  It’s a grind fest.

It’s also SUPER glitchy, at least in its original SNES form; with not only tons of combat and AI bugs, but also some really nasty save file deletion bugs too.

Music is absolutely top-tier stuff though.

Edited yesterday at 07:30 PM by Dcubed

[drahkon]

After 10 hours, I've manged to win a run on all boards, which means I'm done.
Wonderfully unique roguelite. Sometimes RNG can fuck you over, though, which can get a little annoying.

[Hero-of-Time]

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. 

[Nicktendo]

Thought I would join in the fun this year. 

2024 was a pretty decent year, I managed to beat 25 games last year according to my stats, but many of them were smaller games or classic games on NSO. This year, I'm aiming a bit higher. 

Cyberpunk 2077: I picked up the DLC on sale a month or so ago and have just discovered the wonderful world of modding. I have 3 different save files already ranging from 5-25 hours deep, but I'm thinking of starting again from scratch with a new character as a big update has changed a lot of the systems in the game. Managed to get the game running nicely on my PC after tweaking some settings, so I plan to go through the main game and DLC in one go. 

Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection vol.1: Picked this up just before I went away for a couple of weeks over the holidays. I'm about 4 hours into the first game and absolutely loving it. Beat it on both PS1 and GameCube and have very fond memories of it, but have never played 2 or 3, so once I'm done with the first, I'll be quickly moving on to them. 

Fallout 4: Big update last year from MS again perked my interest in this game, and ala Cyberpunk, there are a ton of good mods for this game which can streamline / improve the experience. Been sitting in my Steam account for years, but I never really gave it a fair shake. So this year I will. 

Okami HD: Hype for the sequel. Played a bit on Wii (around 20 hours) and started on Switch again just after the VGAs. 

Final Fantasy X: Always wanted to play this after dipping into 7, 8, and 9 over the years. Started a couple of months ago and got 10 hours deep. The plan is to actually finish it by the end of the year. 

Atomic Heart: Was always intrigued by the setting of this, so picked it up in a sale. First gameplay impressions were not great tbh, but I will soldier on regardless as the story is decent so far. 

Persona 4 Golden: Never played a Persona game. Dipped into a bit of SMT and reviewed Tokyo Mirage Sessions for the site waaay back in the Wii U days. I bought this on a whim when it was very cheap and I'm loving it. 15 hours in and 2 dungeons down. Loving the setting, the characters, and the story so far. This will almost certainly be one of the 12 I definitely finish. Will probably move on to 5 Royal afterwards, keen to see more from this series.

Selaco: Got a few friends on Discord championing this game and I decided to jump in too. Absolutely fantastic so far. Technically, the game is still in early access and only 1 of the 3 planned levels are available right now, but it's amazing what these guys have done on the Doom engine and they are WIZARDS with sprite work. 

Resident Evil Village: I went on a huge Resident Evil binge last year, starting with 4 HD on the Switch. Finished that in February, then went through 2 and 3 Remakes a couple of times each before beating 4 remake in early December. Had a blast, and RE quickly became one of my favourite franchises. So I'm going to go through VIII to continue that trend. 

Sea of Stars: Huge fan of The Messenger, so naturally I should give Sabotage's second release a go. 

Unicorn Overlord: Played the demo for a good amount of time and it really sold me on the game. Love the art style and the setting of this one. 

Yooka-Laylee: I beat the 2D game on Xbox a couple of years ago, and played it again over Xmas on the Switch. To be honest, I'll probably wait until Yooka-Replaylee drops, but I really want to go through the 3D game after having a lot of fun with the sequel. I have the Switch version, but it runs a bit shoddily, so we'll see what happens with Switch 2 or the remaster being released if I have a better option later in the year. 

[drahkon]

I'm gonna do one of those, too.
But I'll be very liberal with it If I don't finish any of those, I don't really care  
Decided to only pick games that I actually own, because I'm not sure which PS+ sub I'll be subbing to. Mine runs out in two days and I'm not sure if I want to extend Premium. I might go with one month of Essential, so I can play some multiplayer games and then see if there will be a sale in February like last year.

• Baldur's Gate 3 - The big one! I mean, what else is there to say. I've been meaning to play it since I bought it, but never really got around to it. Not sure if 2025 is the year, though.
• Citizen Sleeper - Recently bought it, started it and I like it. It's a slow burn, though. Too slow for me right now, which is why it's on the list
• Flinthook - Released on PS4 in 2017 (!) and I don't even remember if I finished the game once. It's a rogue-lite so...yeah
• Hyper Light Drifter - I remember buying it on sale ages ago and giving it a try. It never really clicked, but I'm willing to give it another shot
• Kaze and the Wild Masks - I simply stopped playing this after a while
• Metaphor: ReFantazio - Dropped it a few weeks ago and haven't picked it up again. Yet!
• Seraph - I don't really remember this one
• Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts - I enjoyed what I've played so far, but as with most games in 2024, I just dropped them for whatever reason
• The Banner Saga - With the joys of remote play on Steam Deck, an SRPG might be a good fit.
• Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales - See The Banner Saga

Edited 11 hours ago by drahkon

[Hero-of-Time]

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.

[Dcubed]

3 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

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.

I think I know what dungeon you're in, and you're supposed to attack those enemies with magic.  Physical attacks will just miss 95% of the time.

Hope you grinded your magic up!

[Hero-of-Time]

1 hour ago, Dcubed said:

 

Hope you grinded your magic up!

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

[Hero-of-Time]

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.