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OldCharlieStoletheHandle



Joined: 12 Dec 2009
Posts: 1288
Location: Mastic Beach, NY
PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 5:44 pm Reply with quote
Over the last couple of weeks I have spent about 50 hours playing Stardew Valley, one of the most addicting games ever. It was inspired by the Harvest Moon games but is so much more detailed. Looking through the official wikia for it shows how much is going on in this game which, incredibly, was developed by one person.

I bought a bunch of games from the spring sale at gog.com. One I tried that I really enjoyed is Bastion, a platform hack & slasher with some RPG elements (the character gains XP to level up and you can craft improvements to weapons). It has really a really beautiful art style as well.
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Hitkid



Joined: 21 Mar 2017
Posts: 3
Location: Norman, OK
PostPosted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 3:05 am Reply with quote
Last thing I played was Final Fantasy VII. I'm doing an initial equip run.

In general I'm also doing VIII for the first time, and various PKMN games (latest to be gotten was Emerald, which came with a dead battery apparently -_-)
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OldCharlieStoletheHandle



Joined: 12 Dec 2009
Posts: 1288
Location: Mastic Beach, NY
PostPosted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 11:13 pm Reply with quote
I have spent about 11 hours the past 3 days playing Path of Exile. This is a free-to-play clone of Diablo II and since that was once my favorite game I have really enjoyed PoE (except for when the game crashed during a boss fight).

I have also been playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Pinball FX2 and today (Friday) I started on the remastered version of BioShock.
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OldCharlieStoletheHandle



Joined: 12 Dec 2009
Posts: 1288
Location: Mastic Beach, NY
PostPosted: Sat Apr 01, 2017 6:20 pm Reply with quote
Got my first JRPG today: Tales of Berseria, which I played for about 3 hours. Although I had to sit through a lot of cut scenes overall I am enjoying this so far.
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zawa113



Joined: 19 Jan 2008
Posts: 7357
PostPosted: Mon Apr 03, 2017 3:50 pm Reply with quote
OldCharlieStoletheHandle wrote:
Got my first JRPG today: Tales of Berseria

Wait, have you never played a JRPG before? I just kind of assumed all the anime people played JRPGs too (even if it's just Pokemon).

As for me, Persona 5 comes out in mere hours! I have been avoiding spoilers like the plague, and it is nearly time! Get ready, PS4! I should really go charge my controller, just to be safe. And yes, I am getting the "Take Your Heart" super special awesome edition. I don't get to get super special awesome editions often, so I take advantage here and there. I'm glad the review have been really good for it too, tonight is gonna be awesome!!!
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zawa113



Joined: 19 Jan 2008
Posts: 7357
PostPosted: Mon Apr 24, 2017 6:25 pm Reply with quote
I beat Persona 5, woohoo! This was after a rather large incident involving my PS4 bricking itself almost 6 hours in, so I actually bought the game again on PS3 because I wanted it now, dammit! I'm going to steal a friend's data to do NG+ at some point on PS4. I don't have much to say that hasn't been said about this game already because you probably cannot escape it right now, even if you wanted to.

Needing a break from the awesome of P5, I decided to go for a little bit of junk food and actually use my PSTV for once, so I'm playing Tales of Hearts R. I'm hardly any good at Japanese, but even I can tell that the translation is... taking a ton of liberties, to put it lightly. Seems this pisses off some people more than others, but frankly, the story and characters of most Tales games are pretty vanilla anyway. I am happy to say that the combat is actually damn fun, a hell of a lot more fun than Zestiria's was for me. I much prefer the Smash Bros style of Tales combat over the combo-loop thing that Graces and Zestiria used, so Hearts R is working fine for me. I really don't know too much what changes were made over the DS version (since it never came out over here, but internet says having 4 people on screen and adding Gull are the most major ones so far), and the thing frankly looks like a low end Gamecube game most of the time, but it's still fun. I do wish I could see the enemies instead of random encounters, but eh, the encounter rate isn't ungodly high or anything, I can deal with this. I've signed up for some popcorn, and it's what I'm getting. I seriously hated Zestiria so much, I didn't think I'd ever bother playing a Tales game again, and perhaps for new entries, that might still be true (as I have no played Berseria and probably won't bother unless the combat is like Smash Bros), but Hearts R has a fun battle system and at least one character I kind of like and none I hate as much as I hated Sorey, so we'll go with this.
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Gewürtztraminer



Joined: 14 Nov 2007
Posts: 1028
Location: Texas - Its like whole other country.
PostPosted: Sat Apr 29, 2017 2:08 pm Reply with quote
I too just finished my first run through Persona 5.
It took a long time, as I did a lot of save/reloading for the first few months of in game play, to get a feel what about what was the best way to proceed. My final time was 121 hours.

I was not bored in the least.

Wow. As a huge fan of Persona 3, Persona 3 FES, Persona 3 PSP, Persona 4, and Persona 4 Golden, my bar was set pretty high.
I bought a new PS2, PSP, Vita and a 3DS specifically to play Persona releases.

I am completely satisfied with Persona 5.

Sure Ryuji could be a little (or a LOT) less annoying, and it is easy to get overwhelmed by the stuff you THINK you need to do, and inadvertently stumbling into a game play planned week long sequence without any save opportunities will drive you nuts as it is happening, as it was, I concentrated mainly on the Stats, and the Party member confidants, and ended up midstream on the external Devil, Fortune, Hanged, and Tower confidants as the credits rolled.
Still a lot of side stuff that I did not get to as well.

This game oozes coolness, and does a good job of making you feel that something is not quite as it seems at many points in the game.
Combat wise, my biggest fear for the party members were area effect status ailments. I never seemed to have a good supply of the cures to the ailments I was afflicted with. And 3 or 4 out of 4 getting charmed/dazed/frozen/scared, coupled with the big increase of in normal damage taken if you were afflicted could wipe you out quick.

Luckily, unlike Persona Q, the inventory seems unlimited, and I will not be caught off guard on higher difficulties.

Between all versions, I think I ended up over 1000 hours with the Persona 4 gang, and it looks like I will be hanging out with the Persona 5 team a lot as well

I do need a short break though!
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zawa113



Joined: 19 Jan 2008
Posts: 7357
PostPosted: Tue May 23, 2017 3:05 pm Reply with quote
Man, so PS4s, you can't exchange save data between friends! If I want to do NG+ on Persona 5, I'm going to have to either play the game again on PS4, or replay it on PS3. But I really wanna play it on PS4!!! Whatever, I'm going to play P4Golden first anyway (I did play P4 on PS2, back in the day, but never Golden).

Anyway, couple of breather games first, right? I finally beat Tales of Hearts R and I gotta say, I really enjoyed it. Story wasn't too complex, but it also didn't bite off more than it could chew (which I feel a lot of Tales games tend to do). But it also easily has one of my favorite Tales combat systems, who would've known! Since the Vita isn't exactly swimming in games as is, I would definitely recommend it to Vita or PSTV owners because it's just straight up fun.

I also played Tearaway Unfolded (the PS4 version, remember, I have a PSTV, not an actual Vita). I'm conflicted on how I feel about this. It's not a super long game, 8 hours maybe? and yet, it just would not end. It's got this charming world and setting and graphical design, and the first ending fakeout, ok, fair enough a lot of games can have one ending fakeout, and the story right afterwards did indeed add to the game. Then you resolve the main plot of the game and I'm like "oh, it's going to end now, right?" and nope! Then you get shoved into this short area that you can tell will be short and is all setting up to be a really cool finale area and then nope! No ending for you! And that was the latest point of where the game should've just ended to have still stayed satisfying. And then there's like, 30% more game after that, and it just all feels so pointless, nothing is being added to the world or story at that point, it's just doing these stupid areas for no real reason, and it just seems to last forever. At the end, I feel like it was proof that even a "short game" can be too long if you don't let it be the length it was clearly intended to be. I've played lots of small artistic games and they pretty much all have the decency to end when they're supposed to (I'm thinking of things like Journey, Flower, Rain, Brothers, Papa & Yo), but just because you can pour extra budget and time into something doesn't mean that you should. Persona is 100 hours, but I never felt like I was messing around doing pointless things. A lot of RPGs will have hidden areas and stuff, but there's a reason that they're "side quests", at least you're making the conscious decision to waste your hours dodging lightning in a field.
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zawa113



Joined: 19 Jan 2008
Posts: 7357
PostPosted: Mon Jun 12, 2017 3:38 pm Reply with quote
I thought I should try some other Megaten games, because I've really only ever played the Persona series (3, 4, and 5). I noticed that, probably during sales and stuff, I picked up some various Megaten games, so I decided to start with the spinoff Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner (note the "Avatar Tuner" part of the name didn't make it over stateside). I'm not too far in, but it seems pretty enjoyable. While I do know how most spell names work from Persona, it uses "Zan" instead of "Garu" so I need to sort that out. I'm more used to the stories taking place in the real world, like in Persona, but DDS clearly has an urban fantasy world that is not anywhere near modern(ish) times. I looked online, DDS is maybe 40 hours long, and Persona 5 took me 100 hours (3 and 4 were 80-90 hour range for me), so shorter is ok with me on this one (not every RPG I play needs to be over 70 hours).

Now, DDS pre-dates Persona 3, I wasn't sure if the Megaten series had much power in the west before Persona 3, but here it is, and it got dubbed too. And the dub cast is damn good, Steven Blum is in it! I think maybe it got a bit more attention as a series when Nocturne came out, but I feel like before Persona 3, Megaten had a small fan base that knew they were buying these games and I guess it was enough back during the bubble. I know Nocturne was the first I heard of the series, but Persona 3 FES was the first I played of it (releasing FES for $20 also helped, lol)

But Arceus, was the PS2 always this ugly? I recalled the PS2 being top back in the day and I thought everything looked awesome on it. Could be that I'm playing it on an HD TV or I have no clue, but damn, not a lot of PS2 graphics appear to have aged well. In DDS' case, it's just a bit fuzzy and the environments are pretty basic, but it's definitely better than the speaking animation in Bully, where everyone talks like a large snake trying to unhinge their jaws to swallow their meal whole. But Dark Cloud 2, that actually did age really well, I guess the cel shading worked to its advantage. It looks a bit worn around the edges, but still classy. I need to go back and mess with my PS2, ruin my memories of stuff looking good more, lol.
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Dunk_Kong



Joined: 20 Jun 2017
Posts: 15
PostPosted: Tue Jun 20, 2017 1:43 am Reply with quote
Have started Playing Persona 5 after i finished Persona 4 on Vita. The city is really big to explore.
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zawa113



Joined: 19 Jan 2008
Posts: 7357
PostPosted: Wed Jun 21, 2017 1:32 am Reply with quote
I'm quite enjoying Yooka-Laylee, I know the critical reception to it was lukewarm, but the ordinary player reviews I've seen for it have been really good. I mean, I can understand in a way why the critics would be lukewarm to it, it's a style of game that's kind of gone extinct by now, and boy does the game ever know it (it literally makes fun of a dinosaur for looking like N64 graphics). Now, I was never really into N64 much, I got it way after the fact (traded a friend some manga for one) and Pokemon Snap and Paper Mario were really the only things I ever played on the console properly (and maybe some other random things a bit, like Yoshi's Story or Wave Race). I'm honestly not a big fan of the N64's analog stick, revolutionary for the time, but way too restrictive now. Obviously, Yooka-Laylee doesn't have this problem as all modern analog sticks work great (though I'm playing it on PS4, for the record). Another advantage that Yooka-Laylee has on modern consoles is that it doesn't need to have invisible walls or make blocks that look like they should be able to stand on not stand-on-able (can't think of a better term), generally, if you see it, you can stand on it. I've used that fact a few times to jump up on some things I probably wasn't quite supposed to. It's able to actually put good detail into the environments and some great colors (only more eye popping in a world with grey and brown FPS games). I also must commend the music and music design. All the tunes I've heard so far are fun without being annoying, but the main level theme itself will change subtly throughout the level. Sometimes it's a certain area that you're new in that will do it, but it's easiest to see with going underwater since it always happens underwater. And it's completely seamless at it too.
For negatives, controls could be a bit tighter on certain things and the camera really needs to back the hell up during the mine cart sections. On the controls though, I guess it took a bit of getting used to, but it's more than manageable, and most of the time, it's perfect. I found the default camera a bit too sensitive, but that's an easy to change option at least.
Back to positives though, I've found the level designs themselves to be fun to explore and mess around in. Since they've done away with lives in modern games, there's also no lives here, though knowing where the checkpoints actually are would be handy (I know that any doorway you go through is a checkpoint though). At least dying won't have you lose any Quills or Pagies though (very handy, as I death abused to hell to get some Quills).
Now, load screens are fairly long for the modern era, maybe 15-20 seconds on my PS4 (not a Pro, regular 2nd model PS4), but they only happen before entering a world or going into a different zone on the hub world. Once you're in a level, and it is massive, there's no more load zones, even with going between door ways and stuff. Apparently, this is because everything for a level exists within one game zone, just too far away to see it, so the game isn't loading a whole different zone, just moving to a different area on the same zone.

Some people, and I can definitely understand this, may find the fourth wall breaking humor way too annoying for them. I personally find it to be the right amount. Every sentence isn't pointing out how they're in a game, it's usually done when it would actually be funny. And there's a lot of ridiculous things that the game has that the characters have simply failed to mention at all, but it completely obvious to the audience. It's clearly dancing around the censors happily, doing little things that make you wonder how the game got a mere "E" at times. Maybe I'm ok with this whole thing because none of the characters point out the joke and laugh at the joke, they just make the joke and leave it to be, rather than smack you over the head with it. I can understand finding the voices annoying though. On N64, that was probably great way to save cartridge space, but here, it's clearly done out of nostalgia. I think there was an option to make them shut up though.

But if what you want is a fun platformer with lots to explore and solid controls and great visuals and music and you're on a budget, I really can't recommend this game enough, honestly. This is one of those times where you should go with the audience and not the critics. And if you've never really played one of those old Rare games, there's still a lot of fun for you here too. I really hope Playtonic makes some more games soon, because this game really is infectious!
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OldCharlieStoletheHandle



Joined: 12 Dec 2009
Posts: 1288
Location: Mastic Beach, NY
PostPosted: Sat Jun 24, 2017 7:23 pm Reply with quote
I have put something close to 400 hours into Diablo III since the second week of April, no exaggeration. Yesterday I took a break from it and actually played a couple of games I purchased yesterday from the Steam summer sale.

First was Darkest Dungeon, which I have been thinking about for a while as I have watched some gameplay videos on YouTube and it looked interesting. I played it for about 2 hours then semi-rage quit as I ran into an unbeatable foe rather early on. I know the game is supposed to be hard even on the lowest difficulty and I did a poor job of assembling my team but still. I don't mean to suggest that this is one of those bad games that pretends to be "difficult" by just making something unbeatable, but I did find losing my entire party (not sure if I could have retreated since I may have still been in the tutorial) frustrating. At least I got a Steam achievement for my first wipe-out.

I also picked up the Atari Vault which was on sale under $4 so I had to get it. Way back when I owned a Sears Tele-Games system which of course was a licensed version of the Atari VCS (later branded the 2600). I actually still have the console somewhere in a box with a bunch of carts but am too lazy to look for it (not to mention I do not own a TV it could be attached to). Since of course I did not look at the instructions it took a while to figure stuff out but I had some fun playing Demons to Diamonds, Adventure, Yar's Revenge, Missile Command and others.

I also tried playing Terraria which I actually purchased a while ago but never played. I'd like to say I enjoyed it but no, the game went to nighttime right away meaning I got killed by various things over and over and over and over...yeah, if I want to play a game to remind me I suck at games I can play Breakout in Atari Vault without having to spend 20 minutes creating a character.
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OldCharlieStoletheHandle



Joined: 12 Dec 2009
Posts: 1288
Location: Mastic Beach, NY
PostPosted: Mon Jun 26, 2017 5:55 pm Reply with quote
I hit the Steam sale again after seeing some gameplay videos of The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim on YouTube, picking up the Special Edition. Unlike most other games of this type there I did not have to spend hours creating a character; skills are developed by doing stuff. I tried to do some stuff I saw in a video but kinda got lost. Still, I found a mine and killed and looted a bunch of bandits. I also picked up several quests and a follower. After dying several times trying to use bow and arrow I have now resigned myself to bashing people and/or orcs in the head with a two-handed greatsword. Works well.

Of course the game also did crash once during combat. Even in the Special Edition Bethesda Bugginess lives on.
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animecosplayer



Joined: 22 Jun 2017
Posts: 25
Location: Tampa, Florida
PostPosted: Wed Jun 28, 2017 1:41 am Reply with quote
I'm playing Dumb Ways to Die, as I am a bit stressful. I know you guys are talking about the PS4 game but I am not in the mood to turn on the TV and PlayStation set.
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Wandering Samurai



Joined: 30 Mar 2014
Posts: 875
Location: USA
PostPosted: Fri Jul 07, 2017 10:15 am Reply with quote
Currently playing Super Mario World Advanced for the GBA. Sometimes you get the feeling to want to play through the whole game again, which I'm currently trying to find all 96 exits again.
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