Last game you beat

I beat the first Baldur's Gate, this was my first classic crpg. I played dragon age and some tabletop.
It was crazy learning dnd rulesets that are 20 years old, lol what a useless skill.
That game is incredible though, at least the enhanced editions. They add so many quality of life updates.

Fantastic questing and dialogue for the most part.
Combat has an almost endless amount of possibilities. So much that there are twitch streamers that play that game and nothing else.
Davaeorn is awesome and does hardcore no save insane runs.

Completed Ages B. Had a ton of fun playing both of these games. I wanted to play Link's Awakening to see how it holds up for me after all these years, but I think I need to take a break from the series, or else I might get burnt out from it midway through the game, affecting my view of it.

Started playing Castlevania 1. Like Infinity said, the difficulty comes mostly from enemies knocking you into a pit. Still trying to get used to the fact that you don't have much freedom with movement when jumping. There's a high amount of commitment in that sense.

Latest game beaten on my PS5 adventure is Ratchet and Clank. I've got mixed feelings on this one, but I'm leaning more towards not recommending it. It's worth mentioning that I don't have any experience with the previous games, so I won't be holding it to the standards of the series.

The first two-thirds of the game were rough. A real dull drag of a game. The story is based on the tie-in movie, which I haven't seen. I don't think having the same plot as the movie helps, as it makes the pacing feel a little weird. Not a very descriptive complaint, I know, but was just my gut feeling. The writing is mostly bad, too. The story and writing are clearly for kids - extremely plain and on-the-nose. Some characters were genuinely written quite funny (Captain Qwark, Mr. Zurkon), and the rest of them were utterly dull. The game even retains the cast from the film, which features some notable actors (emphasis on "some"), but even they turn in pretty boring performances. Very little to praise in this department.

Presentation wasn't great either. The game has this sort of late PS2/early PS3 feel to it, like it's been dolled up to look like it belongs on the PS4. The 1800p/60fps you get on PS5 is certainly appreciated, but I was never wow-ed at any point. I'm assuming the pre-rendered cutscenes in the game are just clips from the movie, as they look pretty good, even if noticeably compressed. Pixar/Dreamworks-style animation, you already know how it looks. The in-engine cinematics are especially lifeless, with characters often just stood in front of each other, talking, with cinematic black borders across the screen. After playing Insomniac's Spider Man games, it was surprising to play a title from them that looked so lifeless. It lacks a lot of the polish from their better games. Whenever Ratchet gets a new weapon, he strikes a pose in front of the camera while an "epic" orchestral jingle plays. He's clearly moving his mouth, but doesn't audibly say anything. Those were the sorts of details I expected Insomniac to pick up on. The music is bland and totally forgettable other than the track on the Map screen, which is kinda cool. The generic "movie score" soundtrack hasn't helped at all.

So then, the gameplay. As I mentioned before, I found the majority of the game to be pretty dull. The platforming isn't particularly challenging or interesting in any way, so we're relying on the combat to pick up the slack. I played on Hard difficulty and didn't get stuck on any particular fight for more than a few minutes. I did have plenty of deaths though - for some reason, attacks have the potential to randomly take off 75% of your health. I was never able to figure out if enemies had a chance to crit you, if it was a PS5 framerate bug like Vanquish had on PC (the higher the framerate, the more times the game thinks you're being hit) or if it was something completely different. It was quite frustrating as it made many of the deaths seem cheap, ignoring what I perceived the "rules" of the game to be.

The game does a pretty good job of continously giving you new weapons, as you are able to buy a new one from the shop in nearly every level. By the end of the game, you end up with maybe 13 or 14 different guns, which are accessible across 2 pages of weapon wheels. Combat becomes more interesting as your arsenal expands, leading to some fun gameplay in the more intense fights using some almost Doom-like combos. Most of the weapons are unique, giving them their own place in the combat loop. There are a few that arguably cross over with each other, but the game does a good job with its toolkit for the most part.

One of the best weapons induces a status effect - a stun grenade called the Groovitron (or something similar). It's a disco ball that explodes, and anything in its AoE feels compelled to dance on the spot for a number of seconds. This seemed to work on every enemy I tried it against, including bosses, and can be spammed and looped until you run out of ammo. Very overpowered, but it's fun to use it as a set up to lock groups in place or buy yourself time to reposition. It has a synergy with the other weapons that brings an extra level of engagement to combat. Sadly, this is the only weapon that really plays with enemy statuses in this way. There is a Flamethrower, but it doesn't do damage over time or ignite enemies, as they just take damage like they would from any other gun. The sniper rifle-type weapon highlights enemy weak points when scoped in, allowing you to land critical hits, which is a nice touch. The weapon roster is mostly unique but varies in usefulness. The Combustor, the starting automatic rifle, is probably the least useful weapon in the game with it doing such little damage. Even on hard difficulty, the later levels were the only ones that really considered the combination of loadout/challenge/enemy composition and made interesting combat with them.

However, you unlock Challenge Mode after you beat the game - a new game plus mode with increased difficulty that allows you to upgrade weapons beyond what is allowed in the base game. I haven't tried it, but if this is done well it really could be the game's savior. Part of me wants to play through it, despite finding more than half of the first playthrough really boring - is it Stockholm syndrome? Have I learned to love the captor of my free time?

It's hard to recommend this title as it's clearly meant for kids, but there has been thought put in to making enjoyable combat - it just doesn't show anywhere near often enough to really be regarded as fun. Challenge Mode could be a bit of a game-changer if it remixes encounters well. I think I'm going to move on to my next game, but I could revisit this one day.

@Greg

>not recommending it
It’s a watered down bastardization of the series, so I agree.

>story and writing clearly for kids
The ironic thing is that it wasn’t this way to start, the games had that cartoony style but the story itself had a lot of jokes about corporations, consumerism, greed, etc. Ratchet was actually a character, he had conflicting feelings towards the mission, would sometimes be a wiseass and other times he would be really easy going. Clank is usually the more serious and calculated one, and the original games they would actually fucking talk to each other and have a relationship. In this “reboot” they don’t even acknowledge each other or not act like a cardboard cutout for five seconds.

>lifeless cinematics
Characters have no expressions anymore and the exaggerated animations of the original are gone. This one also got rid of the entire run-down vibe of most of the planets in favor of generic Pixar shit, as you said.

>music
Don’t even get me started. The soundtrack is as forgettable as they come, and it’s made even worse considering how good the original’s music was.

>platforming
Admittedly, the series never really had a focus here. But it’s especially non-existent in this version. I can’t even remember any secrets tied to platforming.

>new weapons
The variety is okay, but most of them just end up being “it’s a gun”, some kind of projectile of AoE explosion with the occasional high power single target thing. The game just boils down to switching guns because you run out of ammo for your most powerful gun, and then running out of ammo again and going to the next strongest gun, etc. The enemies all just come toward you without really doing anything or shoot at you while standing in place, so they don’t really facilitate different play styles.

Should be noted how much of the original game was cut, and all of the new content is completely lifeless, or standard shooting galleries.

Suffice to say, I hated the game.

>I beat the first Baldur's Gate, this was my first classic crpg.
I desperately need to play this. I have it and some similar games on GOG.

>Combat has an almost endless amount of possibilities. So much that there are twitch streamers that play that game and nothing else.
What builds did you play?

>What builds did you play?
It is less about builds and more about the spells you give your mage(also how many mages you want vs fighters) and the choices you make in combat. There is an insane number of spells, a lot of them aren't great, but a lot are.
For instance, the is a spell that coats the whole area in webs. Which means almost anyone in it can't move or attack. But ranged enemies can stand outside and rain death if positioned properly.

Then you learn there are potions and gear that grant "free action" which nullifies all status effects. Which means you can move and attack freely while the entire enemy team is stuck in the web.
All of that just for that one web ability. And there are hundreds of spells.
Tons of creativity.
This guys videos were key to understanding the spells.

What can archers do?

>spell video
Sleep, Blind, Spook, Charm, Grease, Chromatic Orb sound great but sucks that you're limited by the caster type.

>web
Sounds fantastic. Reminds of the spider demons in Nights of Azure. Special lays webs everywhere that slow enemies.

What can archers do?

Just shoot arrows, but there are different types of arrows you can buy when you get money.
Acid and explosive being very op if irrc.
Rangers also act as your lockpickers since they have high dex.

>spell video
Sleep, Blind, Spook, Charm, Grease, Chromatic Orb sound great but sucks that you're limited by the caster type.

The types are really just 3 mage, druid and cleric.

Druid and cleric share some spells but for the most part a cleric is stronger than a druid as far as the exclusive spells they have.
If you have one cleric and mage you can cast anything worthwhile in the game.
If you save scum you can rest after every battle, and refill all spells.
So at the start of any battle you can do anything you want.

>web
Sounds fantastic. Reminds of the spider demons in Nights of Azure. Special lays webs everywhere that slow enemies.

The web tech made me fall in love with this game.
There is also a spell called skull trap. This lets you place a skull mine on the field. The thing is, you can set as many as you want, and they don't disappear until triggered. So if a really hard enemy gives you trouble, place 7 down and then aggro the enemy, the come after you, hit it and boom instant death.

Again if you want you could try to run four mages and two fighters, it is all viable if you play well.

The turn based games like divinity os will never have the depth of the real time with pause games.

>arrow type
Any status arrows? What kind of range does an archer have?

>Divinity OS games less depth
In what way?

Any status arrows?
Not really, it is purely damage.

What kind of range does an archer have?
It is pretty far, they will get into range when you target, the ai is kind of bad unfortunately the game is old.

>Divinity OS games less depth
In what way?

Stuff like kiting. In real time with pause crpgs you could kite with a mage or ranger, but with a turn based game, that isn't possible.

There are tons of things like that, where turn based games simply give you less options.

My way of looking at it is in divinity or other turn based games, the enemy gets a turn when your turn is done, and if the dice roll bad well fuck me.

In real time with pause, I am trying to make sure the enemy's turn means nothing to me, I deny them a turn, because I have already set them up for failure.

So it's a movement/positioning thing.

DOS2 has far more build variety from what I've researched. Not to mention how you can combine spell and environmental effects.

>So it's a movement/positioning thing.

Exactly. It is a strategy game for sure.
I think the DOS games are cool. I just much prefer real time with pause for these old style CRPGs.

>no status
>just damage
That's disappointing.

>bad AI
How?

>Stuff like kiting. In real time with pause crpgs you could kite with a mage or ranger, but with a turn based game, that isn't possible.
>There are tons of things like that, where turn based games simply give you less options.

Divinity does have a lot of options for obstruction, higher ground granting bonus to archers and putting them out of reach, teleport glove. Though true you can't just freely point and click characters any time.

Finally got a graphics card worth a damn, so I'm gonna be catching up on a lot of shooters.

I recently just beat Wolfenstein: The New Order on Death Incarnate difficulty. I didn't like it when it came out 7 years ago (holy shit time fly's), but after a replay I found it overall pretty enjoyable.
There are things that still irk me, like the chapters in-between combat focused ones, where your forced to hang around the resistance base and fetch things for people. And how at the start of almost every level, you lose all your guns and are forced to go around knifing guys 'til you build up your arsenal again.
Overall though, great shooting with well designed arenas to kick ass in. The weapons all feel and sound great with the shotgun being the highlight of the game (even more so when dual-wielded). Charging down hall-ways with it in hand, turning all opposing Nazi's in to burger, never gets old. Might play it again on Uber (the hardest setting) after I play The Old Blood, a spin-off of the main game.

>bad AI
How?

The pathing. So lets say you send two warriors and a ranger somewhere, but the warriors get confused and stuck. Then your ranger runs in like a dummy.
Supposedly it is much better in the remakes.

>Wolfenstein: The New Order on Death Incarnate difficulty
Love that game, you play the sequel? I never touched it just looked like way too much of the cutscenes and non combat sections you mentioned.

> Wolfenstein

The sequel has a LOT more cutscene-y, unskippable segments. It's a real shame, since the actual combat is more absurd, and more fun than ever.

But once you actually get to the combat, it's a goddamn blast.

>Then your ranger runs in like a dummy.
Sounds a bit like FF12. Archers or casters don't understand range or standing back at all.

In Baldur's Gate do you move faster than your enemies? Like if you run away with an archer do you have a chance to turn and fire before they catch up?

>In Baldur's Gate do you move faster than your enemies? Like if you run away with an archer do you have a chance to turn and fire before they catch up?

You can cast haste on your party(very fun but op spell), which doubles movement and attack rate.
You move ridiculously fast and can kite all day. You can even make it more severre by casting slow on the enemies.
A lot of the Hardcore no save 1 player in party strats are haste and kiting.

>Wolfenstein
Noted. I've added New Colossus to my list. It's on GOG as well! You played Youngblood? I might try and convince my brother to play it with me, but it looks kinda meh.

Just finished The Old Blood (Also on Death Incarnate). Really good game I think. It's slow to start and has a lengthy prison escape section at the beginning that's tedious. But once it's going it doesn't stop. Way less story bits getting in the way, an arsenal that stays with you to the end and it's like half the length of New Order. PERFECT!
Also just feels way more like traditional Wolfenstein. The WWII setting, the castles, the gold, the weird Nazi occult shenanigans... Definitely gonna replay this one.

Cleared Advance Mode ( hard mode ) in Advance Wars on GBA.
Did it twice now. A bit steeper overall to Normal. Only bottleneck I can identify is Mission 11: Kanbei's Error? . Need to get that down pat. No funny business. Couldn't look it up on Innernet then, and didn't do it now. Full deck of all CO's (again). About to fiddle the War Room.

Back to working on GoWIII on the path to finishing the evaluation of Zaser's latest run (as he makes to start with GoW:A *ideally not buried by it like so many others*). I've pretty well got Skorpius figured at this point (clearing up some misunderstandings), but I'll need to do at least one more run before I can rule on the possibility of bonus credit for VH PAIN+ against him being a thing that is even possible. Need to work through some rif-raf on the path to the point of all this (S3P2 Zeus handling of old *he had been struggling for a bit and asked for aid prior to figuring it out*) before seeing what he came up with (and weighing in properly).

Finished Silent Hill 2 last weekend, absolutely blew me away and immediately went and ordered Silent Hill 3. SH2 was a belated bday gift from a friend and I was pretty much hooked from the second it started, really atmospheric. Gameplay isn't that special yet there's something about it too that kept me coming back - hard to put my finger on it.

Which ending did you get? According to some "behaviour" ( e.g. dmg taken, eagerness to heal ) the outro changes.

About Silent Hill 3: I am re-playing it right now. It's funny, really. With SH2 the team did all and much more to not do a sequel to the original. And it is still outstanding. Only to do it then proper with 3. It's the only thing I find a bit, uh, "disappointing". But maybe it's fine for anybody who hasn't played the original. It's a fine experience, mind you. And I looove Heather's spunk. She tells every creep in the game off. So cool.

Got the "In water" ending, which after some digging is pretty sweet, as it sounded like the one I'd like the most. Just have his suffering end.

Game should arrive tomorrow. Would you recommend I binge watch SH1's cutscenes or without is fine?

SH2 is one of those few games for me that isn’t mechanically interesting but is still a classic. No game has replicated that atmosphere and those environments.

Royta/Raeng wrote:Would you recommend I binge watch SH1's cutscenes or without is fine?

 Heck NO! Video games are to be played, not to be watched! ( curse Kojima! ) That goes TRIPLE for horror. You should be fine. It's not heavily referenced, when it gets relevant it's mostly for uh, the personal relations to characters. Say, to understand why we should care for the motivations. The original would only confuse with it's own (weird) narrative. If you should develop a yearning for it on the way, treat yourself ( by playing ).

But that's easy for me to say, since I played them on release and of course never had a problem with them aging in context. In all honesty I feel that the original game benefits from the console generation. Not to say it's crude, but it's all the more in the same dark vein.

All 4 Konami games are so dear to me now, I had no idea when I first played them. Yes, I only played the first games, I will never play the other outings. They sound like heavy tourism to me.

"In water", hm? Going for broke with the HP, eh? Must be your action background!

Infinity_Divide wrote:SH2 is one of those few games for me that isn’t mechanically interesting but is still a classic.

I am reminded what Kamiya said when he addressed Mikami about the original Resident Evil. About the player fighting monsters or the now famous controls: Along the line that it's all part of the experience, you make the action parts to accommodating then the atmosphere will suffer. I find that true. Killing monsters first made fun with RE4. For obvious reasons.

Infinity_Divide wrote:No game has replicated that atmosphere and those environments.

Isn't that all one would need to know about it? Letter of authenticity.

DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power. Awesome game. It's got a 'platformer ethos' to it of quickly dispatching enemies and moving to new ground. I really dig the pacing, but what really is special here that you won't find in other 3D action titles is how clean (no blood) and colorful the visual effects are in combat. A unique comic-style exclamation vfx appears when hitting combatants and is used to great effect emphasizing a combo and also big hits. The truly remarkable aftermath of vanquishing enemies produces scatterings of red coins and luminous green star bits that auto-zip collide back to the player. And when you play well by not getting hit when attacking your 'chain number' goes up and more goodies go ca-chinging into the player -- and there's just tons of this stuff on the screen (it looks a lot more pleasant than item recovery of absorbing typical silver coins or ring drops or whatever).

Gotta go for 100% now.

Cleared Castlevania (Lament of Innocence). No potion (or items). No 100%. No magic (subweapons OK). No secret boss. I have to redact my opinion from 15 years ago. It's a nice transition from 2D to 3D and I will go for more game modes. It's pretty. But some of the optional backtracking still blows eggs. Ah, well.

Superman: Countdown to Apokolips [GBA]. 3/5. Fun isometric game to breeze through. 'Mastery' of levels, though, requires a slower, cold brutalness pulverizing the opposition with your fists. Getting a 3/3 'Superman shields' award in stages 2 and stage 5 would be a worthy nomination for this site's Challenge Run thread, but I'm 99% sure those levels are 'unsolvable' when it comes to those achievements*. They're still pretty cool levels to test your skill in despite that.

Most interestingly is how in certain stages when it comes to high-level play the fighting of enemies feels like you're controlling an action genre character in a world that's controlled by another genre (enemies have RTS or an X-Com-esque genre mechanisms). I'd definitely like to see this game expanded on.

*no, they're beatable.

I cleared Castlevania: Curse of Darkness and I have only expletives for the level design, that is as basic and draining as any dungeon crawler. The distances traveled are drab and a major thing to hold against the whole experience. I played hybrids before, and can name Vagrant Story as outstanding in that regard. To say Curse of Darkness plays labyrinthine is putting it mildly.

I beat Fatal Frame 1 on normal (OG Xbox version). Great game IMO, has a great mansion design, and the team simply nailed the atmosphere and sound design.

It has no crafting/resource management and the combat kinda feels like an action game, in a good way. It's simple and fun, but learning ghosts patterns and reacting to them can take some time. The ghosts can also be quite agile and aggressive which I always appreciate. There are also higher difficulties and a mission mode, and I plan to beat all of them. Would recommend all of you here to give it a shot.

@Zenyn - Since I have yet to try a Castlevania game - As action games, Castlevania Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness are worth playing?

GN1 wrote: Since I have yet to try a Castlevania game - As action games, Castlevania Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness are worth playing?

Any Vania? I prefer several 2Ds. Speaking of 3D I only now know the both mentioned. I feel Lament is more close to successful in a transion from the change of planes. Playing a whip-wielding Belmont certainly helps. It's not as smooth as from any Metroid to Metroid Prime though. But I would certainly say it's snappy action. Curse of Darkness is closer to Symphony of Night, having a level system and a blown-up idea of the Familiars of the same game. But the stages are in layout as plain as it gets. I'd say it depends what your personal preference is.
Action for Lament, action-hybrid for Curse. I do think it's that cut and dry.

Never played any Castlevania before yes, so assuming I would want to play it - which games should I play from the 2d entries?

Lament of Innocence - I will give it a try sometime as an action game. How is Lords of Shadow?

Just finished playing Super Mario RPG. The game is fine if you play casually, but if you don't want to grind then you'll be missing out on some moves, which are locked behind levels. Mario's initial Jump is good for early game, decent for mid, and a little worse than a non-powered up damage item. But it needs to be powered up first (read: use it approximately 120 times, doesn't matter if it does 0 damage).

If you value your sanity, do NOT attempt to do a low level run in this game. Not gaining experience is tied to RNG, and the last thing you want to deal with after a 5-20 minute fight (depends on the boss) is RNG.

This concludes my playthrough of the SNES Ito RPGs. I will take a break from the genre, as I feel like I'm a bit burnt out of them.

So perhaps this is finally a great time to play MGS1. I don't have anything else to try (besides FF XII, but as noted I want to space it out).

> Castlevania
Every Vania after Symphony of the Night is a more Metroid-esque game. So keep that in mind. Personally I still think Super Castlevania is the best of the original versions. It suffers from being the popular one, so a lot of people made it cool to hate on these days. But it is just a fantastic sprite based action-platformer. Great spritework, OST, fun levels. It isn't as brutally difficult as the rest mind you and probably the easiest to beat in the series (at least it was for me), but a great entry point.

I agree with Zenyn that they are all definitely playable and can and should be enjoyed. Personally though I'd say start with Super CV and see if you enjoy it.

> lords of shadow
Lords of Shadow is a fun action game that has nothing to do with the IP aside from the name imo. I don't hold it in super, super high regard mind you, but it's an enjoyable romp. Good exploration and level design especially. Its combat isn't my cup of tea.

@Phoenix Wright

I can relate. Maybe MGS1, or something like a Metroid-esque game (not sure you played those). Maybe something cute like Parapa The Rapper (just a short game). Might be a good refresher.

I've only played Super Metroid and that's it. I tried playing Cv1, but I think I got distracted with something else, I don't remember finishing it.

It's been a while since I said I'd try MGS1 though, and this time I want to make it a reality.

I've been on a Metroid binge lately, highly recommend Prime 1 if you can get your hands on it. It really is along the lines of RE4 etc. as a classic of its time.

Noted. I did hear good things about the game.

It often gets a lot of "best game ever made" slogans thrown its way. Generally I am very skeptical of such remarks, but with Metroid Prime...best game ever made? Could very well be. It really is one of those "lightning in a bottle" games where the stars just aligned in every damned way. It has great pacing, great lore/worldbuilding, graphics are out of this world for the time, fantastic eye for detail, gameplay heavy (barely any interruptions), stellar level design, OST to die for, really fun combat that's surprisingly deep for how simple it is etc.

Game has it all.

Royta/Raeng wrote: Personally I still think Super Castlevania is the best of the original versions. It suffers from being the popular one, so a lot of people made it cool to hate on these days.

Snobby interjection: My fave Vania is Castlevania Chronicles for PSX. There, I said it. It's based on a game for a JP home computer. And, same as Super IV, it's a remake of the original. Only it does everything right, to the point that it doesn't subvert itself playwise by a 5-way whip. Sub-weapons stay relevant. It's tight in all places and I couldn't be happier with it. If only half of the Super IV reverend base would know and play it... brother, you couldn't call it SIV related "hate" anymore. Because they would feel it, too. Take my insubstantial word for it. Find it! Play it! Be merry!

One other thing: When you recommend Super Castlevania IV as the crown, be sure to give the password for hard mode from the start. With it, you cannot flex the fat the game has, but you would not be in any more danger to think dismissive of what came before it. I mean challenge-wise. The SNES one softens any player who plays it, and that's undermining the others. That's my major gripe with it. I don't hate it, I'm just irreverend. Because there's Castlevania Chronicles. (referring to the Original Mode in CC, NOT the Arrange Mode)

NG3RE on Ultimate Ninja:
I basically blew through this difficulty in something like 2 days. Certainly challenging, but also really easy to cheese (even disregarding the scythe). I'm thoroughly tired of this game now and probably won't return to it.

Scott Pilgrim Beat Em' Up:
Hated it beyond words.

Wolfenstein 3D:
Went back to this as a result of playing the recent Machinegames output. Never did beat it as a young person, as it would always give me motion sickness (still the only game to have this effect on me outside of VR games). I however, on this playthrough, used the ECwolf sourceport which sports a Doom-esque automap, making navigating the maps quite a bit less time consuming as well as less nauseating.
Overall still a pretty fun game. It's incredibly basic when compared to shooters that would follow. But it's focus on low-health enemies with hit-scanning weapons has a certain charm to it that's more reminiscent of 'Blood' than the 'Doom' games that would succeed it.

Wolfenstein II The New Colossus:
I liked this one a lot. It really ups the challenge with higher enemy counts and aggression, making fights really frantic and tense. There is one shoot-out in particular in a courtroom that was really great.
I understand there was a lot of negativity around this game? Don't really understand why. I had a blast.

If I had to rank my favorites of the Machinegames Wolf Series, It'd go like this:

1 The Old Blood
2 The New Colossus
3 The New Order

Most Ninja Gaiden games can be pretty badly cheesed once you throw all care to the wind if you get me. That said in NG3:RE I felt tempted to do it the most since the game just throws so much shit at you at times, especially in the trials.

Surprised to hear you hated Scott. I hear this more and more these days, but I remember really enjoying it back when it came out.

Regarding The New Colossus, IIRC it had something to do with a political statement or whatnot that got people's engines going regarding the game.

>NG Cheese
I suppose... I guess I rarely abused things in the other games since I enjoyed fighting most things normally. In RE I got really sick of all the auto-dodging and ridiculous sliding around enemies do. Got to a point I just didn't care anymore.

>Scott
I can't stand progression systems in beat em' ups.

>The New Colossus
Ahh... I'm not really the easily offended sort. Nor am I politically minded, so I guess a lot of that stuff kinda went over my head. Still, you can skip the cutscenes. It's still mostly video game y'know? Whatever.

>NG3RE
I really want to love this game but for some reason nothing about it is clicking with me. Ryu’s movements and animations seem so much worse than 2’s, and the arenas are super boring. Any advice for trying to get in to it?

Beat Super Metroid for the first time ever. Great game, best game of its type I’ve played in a long time. Been watching some speedruns and runs with skips, the movement in this game is pretty crazy. I will say I feel like the game suffers from the same issue as almost all Metroidvanias: moment to moment traversal is just not threatening. For most of the game if I had to go back to an old area I’d just barrel through the enemies and not even pay attention, the only time this wasn’t the case was the final area.

Might go to Prime 2 after this. I’ve played Prime 1 a decent bit, but never beat 2.

NG3:RE is, imo, best played consistently but shortly. Half hour per day, maybe fifteen minutes here and there. It's a game you can insanely fast burn yourself out on. It shines best in its trial modes or doing Crystal Skull challenges or just a few rooms, derping around. Really allows the combat to shine. But if you just sit yourself down and play it for a few hours a day you'll throw that disk out the window I guarantee it.

> metroid enemies
Be careful what you wish for in that regard haha. Metroid Prime 2 around the mid-point starts doing this, especially on Hard. Rooms you enter will lock, and you will be swarmed by the hardest enemy in the game (unless you use the exploit that nukes them from orbit, was so proud to find that as a kid). These games are about traversal as you note, so enemies are more on a scale. When you first encounter them, they are a threat as you don't have many resources. When you return later-on, they are a non-issue, giving a good sense of powerscaling and empowerment without going overboard I'd say. With these big worlds you kinda don't want to have things slow you down too much, though I get what you're saying.

Metroid Fusion on Hard and Metroid Zero Misison on Hard (especially Zero Mission) don't have this though, as those games don't fuck around.

> Prime 2
Actually replaying it as we speak, though nearly finished. Fantastic game, though I prefer Prime 1. The biggest upgrade they got were the bosses which are just phenomanal, both in terms of presentation and mechanics, way ahead of the curve in terms of FPS-bosses. It's almost sad how well they're designed compared to modern bullshit.

Cleared Mega Man 11 on Normal, without Double Gear assistance or buying anything in the shop. No Continue (Save OK). Boss Rush in 1 life. No Boss weapons, only Mega Buster and Charge Shot. Took a break of some months after reaching Wily Stage 2. It's a tight game, very pleasant that the company can still produce that all in-house. I enjoy every boss (even the Wily stages one), exept Block Man. Such a chump, he's actually just a fat bully. Getting big and in your private space. Wily Machine 1 and 2 are surprisingly fun. That skull motive is still rad.
Will they produce another Man? For everlasting peace...

Beat Prime 2 again, still fantastic. Really feel the bosses are the absolute highlight. The exploration is a lot less engaging/fun than Prime 1 was to me. Lot of the lore-snippets also felt shorter and less well written.

Think Dark Samus's second fight is the stand-out. You can do so many little tricks to her, little openings, unorthadox usage of certain weapons to force her out or in certain situations - fantastic fight.

Great OST as well. Kinda wish I hadn't sold my Wii now, kinda in the mood to play Prime 3 now. Well, at least Dread is around the corner.

Beat God of War: Ghost of Sparta on Hard and Very Hard. Quality-wise it's similar to Chains of Olympus, it expands grabs options and it introduces a good weapon, but less overpowered than the Gauntlet of Zeus. Unfortunately magic is even worse than in CoO and some enemies are rather unbalanced with off-screen attacks (you can't control camera in GoW) and they love to hit you right after your i-frames end.

Finally completed NG2 on Master Ninja. Aside from the first two chapters (1 and a half precisely, until you get the Talons to lv.2) it wasn't really that much different from Mentor. The combat shines a lot here and you need a good understanding of everything to beat it, which is something that action games rarely do even on the highest difficulty.

Overall I liked it a lot more than Black, since the combat got more complex and the non-combat stuff was streamlined. The things that I didn't like about the game were also present in Black, and that has more to do with the design philosophy of TN than time constraints I think.
UTs are still to powerful and shouldn't give such a large boost in money when used, enemies are never mixed in interesting ways, ToVs are boring tests of patience and last waaaay too long, audio-cues are lackluster and (most) bosses are underwhelming.
Also some enemies deal too much damage compared to others. Purple VG are pathetic and even their strongest attack deals like 30% of your lifebar while red Gajas can deal 80% of your lifebar with some of their attacks.

Despite this I really enjoyed my time with the game and will probably do a NG+ run soon, just to get revenge on the first two chapters.

First off, great job on the first trek through Master Ninja! It's always a bit of a rocky road and honestly, it's great to go through it again on NG+ to show the game who is the true master ninja. NG+ also offers a bit of a bigger safetynet to experience with weapons and offensive-strats, since you can tank a bit more damage.

I can recognize myself in a lot of your points without a doubt. Great combat system, but lacking enemy variation/mixups (even in the survival/challenge maps) and bosses can be a bit of a drag (though I do feel the greater fiends, especially Fiend Genshin, are a highlight).

Regarding UTs and damage-values, this is most likely a deadline issue. It's clear from interviews that Itagaki was aware of the over abundance of UT abuse (especially in regards to karma running), hence the change, but it obviously went bad with UTs being used (like OTs) to kind of make newbies feel good at the game as well. I do think they are still quite harmless, you can opt to use them less, but it's still something that needs a look. Technically speaking it's still fantastic mechanic (sacrifice cash to have a stronger move is a great twist on economy), but there's just so many little issues. They tried to fix it with NG3 and NG3:RE and honestly they still don't have a fucking clue haha. Ironically I feel NG2004 had the best system in some regards... sometimes the best idea is the first one.

Damage-values are completely wack, and this is probably due to them now being % based for the most part. I don't have the raw values on hand, but for example Genshin's attacks all deal BaseHP% damage. I.e. if you have a 1000 HP, they deal 50, and if you have 100, they deal 5. You can see this in OLB runs against him where his attacks barely do anything on Master Ninja. Some moves were dumped way too high, with Gaja's (using the above example) having their aerial tailswipe deal 100+80%baseHP, there's probably a lot of numeral oversights due to the rushed nature. On the one hand, it's kinda cool to have some of these insanely dangerous attacks, but I agree it's a bit messy.

Itagaki especially in a post-release interview talked about Gigadeath stating "that was a shame, we had so many cool ideas for that fight but we just ran out of time. If I could go back, I would" (paraphrasing here, don't have the direct quote on hand).