Cube Posted January 14 Posted January 14 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 January 14 Posted January 14 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 2
Hero-of-Time Posted Saturday at 01:15 PM Posted Saturday at 01:15 PM 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. 3 1
Happenstance Posted Saturday at 02:36 PM Posted Saturday at 02:36 PM 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. 2
Julius Posted Saturday at 11:20 PM Author Posted Saturday at 11:20 PM Updated the first post with your pledge progress @Hero-of-Time, great stuff already getting your second pledge game cleared! been fun reading your thoughts on Grandia, and appreciate you sharing clips and pics as you've been going through as for whatever reason I only had the game's cover art stuck in my head, but no real idea of what the game itself looked like. With your recommendation it's definitely getting filed in my head as one to make sure I get to...eventually @Happenstance your Yakuza 0 timing has been uncanny; one of my friends is finally committing to playing through a copy of 0 I bought him during lockdown after trying here and there (albeit very half-arsed) to get through it in the past, and just last night when discussing it with him and my Yakuza/RGG-loving friend, we very nearly joined him. It's certainly put Infinite Wealth at the front of my mind, that's for sure! looking forward to hearing your thoughts on Rebirth when it drops on PC next week too!
Glen-i Posted Saturday at 11:26 PM Posted Saturday at 11:26 PM (edited) I just wish Grandia's sprite work wasn't so mangled in the HD collection. They look a lot nicer in the original version. Edited Saturday at 11:26 PM by Glen-i
Hero-of-Time Posted yesterday at 08:17 AM Posted yesterday at 08:17 AM 8 hours ago, Glen-i said: I just wish Grandia's sprite work wasn't so mangled in the HD collection. They look a lot nicer in the original version. I don't mind the smooth filter that gets applied on old games like this but with Grandia there are a lot of instances where the sprites themselves become disjointed, with the top and bottom of characters not matching up correctly.
Dcubed Posted yesterday at 10:47 AM Posted yesterday at 10:47 AM (edited) Well, now that we have our first official look at Switch 2 (and a comittment to a 2025 release date), I suppose it's now safe for me to put up a pledge of my own... This list is not exhaustive Surely they can't delay it again now!? Edited yesterday at 10:48 AM by Dcubed 2
Glen-i Posted yesterday at 11:24 AM Posted yesterday at 11:24 AM 35 minutes ago, Dcubed said: Well, now that we have our first official look at Switch 2 (and a comittment to a 2025 release date), I suppose it's now safe for me to put up a pledge of my own... This list is not exhaustive Surely they can't delay it again now!? Brave of you to assume it won't be releasing in the second half of 2025.
Dcubed Posted 23 hours ago Posted 23 hours ago 1 hour ago, Glen-i said: Brave of you to assume it won't be releasing in the second half of 2025. I'll just have to speedrun everything hardcore if Switch 2 comes out in November then 1
Hero-of-Time Posted 5 hours ago Posted 5 hours ago Yup, my journey through the Neo Geo games continues. Once again this is another fighting game and probably my favourite so far. The amount of unlockable things on offer is very generous and so there is plenty to aim for. When playing through story mode you will earn points that you can spend in the store on such things as endings, profiles and mini games. There are plenty of characters to unlock as well and I quite like how this is done. When you complete the game you will see a characters ending but eventually you will unlock what is essentially the second half of the game and it's here you will need to play through story mode again to earn the true ending for each of the characters. It gives the player a good amount of replay value. It took a while to unlock them all. Character Endings 1 3
Hero-of-Time Posted 5 hours ago Posted 5 hours ago This one was quite a surprise. The game is a RPG where the aim is to obtain and evolve your weapons to make progress in the game. You start off with a catcher gun that is used on monsters to catch them. These monsters can then be fed into your normal weapons to power them up. Feed enough of them into the weapon and you can evolve it into something more powerful. You can also increase the base power of the weapon by simply killing monsters with it. Both of these things were right up my street and allowed me to do lots of grinding to become pretty OP very early on. The combat system has you gunning down monsters but you can't just fire a constant stream of bullets. You have a power bar that is pretty much a stamina bar. Each of your weapons has it's own bar and so it's beneficial to carry a few with you so you can swap on the fly when you need to recover stamina for a weapon. Monsters respawn when you exit and re-enter an area. This makes for some fast exp farming if you can find an area that suits you. The story is a bit of a mess and isn't helped by the fact that the translation is all over the place. You essentially work with a demon to try and obtain the ultimate weapon. You clear an area, go back to see the demon and a new area will unlock. You just need to work your way through each of the stages, take on bosses and see the ending. The fun is in finding new weapons, grinding exp and then evolving them to see what you get. It was great coming across a game like this. It's one I've never heard of, it's a breezy RPG at around 5 hours long and it offered a nice change from all the fighting games that are in this collection. 1 3
BowserBasher Posted 20 minutes ago Posted 20 minutes ago Started on my first game yesterday. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds. I've done what's basically the tutorial level and the first main level. The controls are definitely taking a little bit to get used to, though I feel it's more there's no targeting button. So when you have a number of enemies come at you at once, your left just either taking hits or running away to then turn your character around and come back at them again. Stuff like that has ended my game on more than one occasion. Seems like there a fair bit of puzzle elements to the game, so far none have been too taxing, just needed to go over things and make sure to search everything. It's not always clear when you have to interact with something that you need to, as there's no button icon that appears or way of know that that object needs it. In the first level you are required to find a key to operate a small digger to smash a wall. Well I had the key and was at the digger. Tried selecting the key and it did nothing. Tried pressing loads of buttons whilst standing next to it but it did nothing. It was only when I stood in one particular spot that it worked, even then there was no sign or prompt to let me know I was in the right place to use the item. Other than those, so far it's been a fairly decent outing. I've yet to play as more than just a few characters so will see how things go later. 1
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