Cube Posted Tuesday at 10:48 AM Posted Tuesday at 10:48 AM 1 hour ago, bob said: I cannot get spoilers working at all. The button in the post editor does nothing - no pop-up or anything, and the code I tried doesn't seem to work. Can someone who cares about the sanctity of the story in Pokemon Arceus do something? I'm looking into it. I've manged to get it to sort of work, but it doesn't like the end tag. 1
drahkon Posted Tuesday at 10:56 AM Posted Tuesday at 10:56 AM 14 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said: Put some more time into Grandia. Not sure if I asked you already, but have you played Grandia before?
Hero-of-Time Posted Tuesday at 12:45 PM Posted Tuesday at 12:45 PM 1 hour ago, drahkon said: Not sure if I asked you already, but have you played Grandia before? Nope.
drahkon Posted Tuesday at 03:48 PM Posted Tuesday at 03:48 PM 3 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said: Nope. Hm, I thought a man with your...tenure...has played this before Anyways, I've played 5 hours of StS: Downfall since Sunday. 7 runs won with the Slime Boss, 2 lost. StS 2 will probably be my Downfall regarding my gaming pledge...HEHEHEHEHE, see what I did there?
Hero-of-Time Posted Tuesday at 04:45 PM Posted Tuesday at 04:45 PM 45 minutes ago, drahkon said: Hm, I thought a man with your...tenure...has played this before Nah. It slipped me by. I started it years ago on the Vita but never stuck with it. I then bought it last year for the PS1 but the HD collection got released soon after I purchased it. There are lots of JRPGs I've not played yet. The Breath of Fire games, Shadow Hearts and certain entries in the Shining Force series are ones that come to mind. I only played my first Star Ocean and Ys games last year. 2
Julius Posted Tuesday at 04:48 PM Author Posted Tuesday at 04:48 PM 1 minute ago, Hero-of-Time said: There are lots of JRPGs I've not played yet. The Breath of Fire games, Shadow Hearts and certain entries in the Shining Force series are ones that come to mind. I only played my first Star Ocean and Ys games last year. *sees no mention of Suikoden* 1
martinist Posted Tuesday at 05:18 PM Posted Tuesday at 05:18 PM Gat out of Hell is done and i'm playing through Saints Row 2022. It's actually kind of fun, when it first came out everyone was saying it sucked because of the characters and the story but the gamepaly is still Saints Row. Still has insurance fraud and the mayhem stuff it's just packaged differently. All the DLC adds a lot to it too, Real shame Volition shut down, would have liked to see this continue but i guess it didn't sell... 2
Julius Posted Tuesday at 05:37 PM Author Posted Tuesday at 05:37 PM On 1/13/2025 at 10:31 AM, Dufniall said: Thought I'd also join in on the fun and make a pledge. It'll be a good incentive to clean some of the backlog. Hope to get at least a couple off the list before the Switch 2 arrives! Glad to have you join the pledge Dufniall! Added yours to the wall of pledges in the first post Funny the bit of overlap we've got going on - I'm pledging to play Replicant for the first time while you're pledging to do the same for Automata; we've both pledged to play The Witcher 3; and even though it didn't make my actual pledge for the reasons I outlined, Resident Evil 2 is 100% on my docket for the year, whereas Resident Evil 3 is on your pledge. Obviously what I'm saying is that this is a classic case of great minds thinking alike and all that, of course looking forward to hearing your thoughts on them! @drahkon @bob congrats both on clearing your first pledge games for the year - have updated the first post with your progress love the different ways we're all going about marking a game as complete on our pledge, by the way.. 2 1
Hero-of-Time Posted Thursday at 07:53 AM Posted Thursday at 07:53 AM (edited) My journey through Grandia continues. Apparently I'm now on what would have been disc 2. I ran into a spot of trouble with this boss. The thing was doing stupid damage to both Justin and Feena. Also, Justin's attacks were pretty pitiful against it. I decided to reload my save and do some levelling up. I switched the automated battle system from doing regular attacks to doing magical attacks. I think I had neglected this for too long and as such some of my stats weren't the best. I also changed the weapon on Justin to one that was just pure raw damage. After doing all of this I ended up annihilating the boss. I've lost yet another party member but gained another two in Rapp and Milda. This is the only aspect of the game that I'm not a fan of. I'm not too keen on when JPRGs chop and change party members. I prefer to have my main party and leave it at that. I don't mind having some in reserve but having them there and then having them disappear from the game/story doesn't sit right with me. Plus, I'm not huge on both Rapp or Milda. I took on one of the bonus dungeons yesterday evening. You get a shockingly low amount of exp for fighting battles in there, especially for how much of a fight the enemies put up. I decided it was probably best to just avoid what battles I could and run my way through the dungeon and fight the boss. This worked out pretty well. It was still a trek to get to him but at least I had plenty of SP/MP left for the actual battle. I love that between all the battles and hectic dungeon crawling the game allows for quiet moments between the characters. The conversations on the boat between Feena and Justin were lovely and the visuals once again helped enhance these scenes. I also continued to make progress with Neo Geo Pocket Selection Vol.1. There's not a lot to say about this that I didn't say back when I played the original game. It's more of the same really, which isn't a bad thing. It's just a standard run and gun game that allows for multiple path choices and has 2 characters to play as. It was fine. Another fighting game is in this collection. This one probably sits in the middle of the two that I have previous played. Once again, I aimed at beating the game with each of the characters and unlocking any secret ones. The unlocking mechanism is pretty bad in this though. It's all completely random. When playing trough the story mode you will get challenged by a fighter and if you're lucky it will be one of the ones you need. I didn't have an issue with this until it came to unlocking the final one I needed. The dude just wouldn't show up. I actually finished this on Tuesday evening but it took another evening of essentially grinding play throughs in order for him to finally show up. Here they are. I was pretty disappointed with them. They are essentially just colour swaps for some of the main fighters. Still, it was a decent enough game and yet another title from the collection that is off the list. Character Endings Edited Thursday at 07:54 AM by Hero-of-Time 2 1
Hero-of-Time Posted 6 hours ago Posted 6 hours ago What a game and I love the platinum trophy icon. Grandia is certainly worthy of the praise it received back when it released, and the praise it continues to get to this day. The final optional dungeon took some doing. One save point, 10 floors to get through, enemies that hit like tanks and 3 bosses to defeat. How I ended up tackling it was by clearing a couple of floors and then running back to the save point to refresh my SP and MP. As long as I didn't leave the dungeon or get killed, the enemies would stay defeated. After doing all of that I found the end game to be pretty easy. Justin's Heaven & Earth move was completely wiping out mobs and bosses left and right. The rest of the party were essentially there to just provide him with backup. Speaking of the party, I wasn't a huge fan of the final party member. She didn't really add anything to the story and barely said a word when she joined you. I would have preferred Sue or Gadwin to have rejoined the team. The way the story played out was great. It gave you just enough breadcrumbs to follow to keep you intrigued and there were one or two revelations I didn't see coming. I miss this era of JRPGs. I miss the fun of getting to a story point and be treated with a CGI/FMV type cutscene. You knew things were getting serious when one of these showed up. I'm very happy to have finally have played this and it's a game that has certainly aged like a fine wine. With it now beaten, that's game number 2 done from my pledge list. 1
Happenstance Posted 4 hours ago Posted 4 hours ago Playing through Yakuza 0 again at the moment after I rebought them all on PSN. Been a while so it's been nice to get back to Kamurocho. Not doing as much side stuff this time though as I'm more interested in the main story and with this being a new game plus save I'm fine for money and stats. Need to get as far as I can though before Final Fantasy VII Rebirth comes to Steam next week as I'll want to start that straight away after waiting all this time.
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