Is it a dragon or is a metaphor for the dark coldness of a bleak universe?
*Gets burnt to a crisp*
Oh, it's Dragon Season, *****!
What are you currently playing?
- Thread starter Nick Calandra
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*Gets burnt to a crisp*
Oh, it's Dragon Season, *****!
No that was purely a dig at how Sekiro talks. Nearly every other reply is what Emma just said, but in the form of a question.
God of War: Chains of Olympus after finishing 3.
I hadn't played this in ages, and I was hankering for more of that sweet, sweet combat. Of the two PSP titles I think it's the superior one. Ghost of Sparta is alright, but it has some of the blandest, most forgettable level design in the entire series. Chains of Olympus is shorter, but it feels like the right length and never outstays its welcome. The few new weapons and spells there are are fun, and mostly avoid feeling like reskins of other abilities. The Gauntlet of Zeus is an especially satisfying weapon. Though it's a bit short on boss fights for the series, the few there are are very nice, and the final boss feels like one of the hardest in the entire series.
It would be tempting to call it little more than a glorified God of War 2 level pack, but it actually manages to build the continuity and Kratos's characterization in pretty significant ways so it feels like a vital piece of the series. Since it's a prequel, Kratos acts surprisingly humanely in it compared to most other entries, feeling more like a harsh enforcer of Olympus than the spiteful, omnicidal asshole he becomes later. It also has one of the strangest but most memorable uses of the button mashing prompt ever, abandoning your daughter in Elysium. It's one of the only times I can think of where using a quicktime event actually feels perfectly meshed with the story, since Kratos has to struggle to be able to get through.
It has some shortcomings though: the aforementioned dearth of boss fights is noticeable in a series known for them, the fact that we never even see Morpheus despite him being the main threat for like half the game feels dumb, there's hardly any new music (if at all), and I think out of all the games in the series pre-reboot this one has the most problematic camera. There's one combat section in particular towards the end where I died at least a dozen times: you're locked in a room with to Minotaur giants that have a charging attack that you can't block, so you have to dodge it at the right time. The problem is that almost always at least one of the Minotaurs will be off screen because of the camera, and as such you have no plausible way to see what they're doing. This led to another particularly aggravating revelation: if you die enough times in the same section, the game will just give you extra health. Unprompted, unasked. I can't remember the last time I felt so condescended to by a game.
Over time one thing about these PSP games becomes just more bewildering: what other game series has made allusions and references to events that happen in games that weren't even out at the time? God of War 2 mentions Kratos putting Atlas in the position he's in, but Chains of Olympus came out about a year after God of War 2. God of War 3 makes some very noticeable references to Ghost of Sparta ("Your pawn has failed you, Gaia. Perhaps you should have chosen the other one."), but that game hadn't even been announced when GOW3 came out. We even hear a couple of lines directly from Ghost of Sparta in one sequence.
I hadn't played this in ages, and I was hankering for more of that sweet, sweet combat. Of the two PSP titles I think it's the superior one. Ghost of Sparta is alright, but it has some of the blandest, most forgettable level design in the entire series. Chains of Olympus is shorter, but it feels like the right length and never outstays its welcome. The few new weapons and spells there are are fun, and mostly avoid feeling like reskins of other abilities. The Gauntlet of Zeus is an especially satisfying weapon. Though it's a bit short on boss fights for the series, the few there are are very nice, and the final boss feels like one of the hardest in the entire series.
It would be tempting to call it little more than a glorified God of War 2 level pack, but it actually manages to build the continuity and Kratos's characterization in pretty significant ways so it feels like a vital piece of the series. Since it's a prequel, Kratos acts surprisingly humanely in it compared to most other entries, feeling more like a harsh enforcer of Olympus than the spiteful, omnicidal asshole he becomes later. It also has one of the strangest but most memorable uses of the button mashing prompt ever, abandoning your daughter in Elysium. It's one of the only times I can think of where using a quicktime event actually feels perfectly meshed with the story, since Kratos has to struggle to be able to get through.
It has some shortcomings though: the aforementioned dearth of boss fights is noticeable in a series known for them, the fact that we never even see Morpheus despite him being the main threat for like half the game feels dumb, there's hardly any new music (if at all), and I think out of all the games in the series pre-reboot this one has the most problematic camera. There's one combat section in particular towards the end where I died at least a dozen times: you're locked in a room with to Minotaur giants that have a charging attack that you can't block, so you have to dodge it at the right time. The problem is that almost always at least one of the Minotaurs will be off screen because of the camera, and as such you have no plausible way to see what they're doing. This led to another particularly aggravating revelation: if you die enough times in the same section, the game will just give you extra health. Unprompted, unasked. I can't remember the last time I felt so condescended to by a game.
Over time one thing about these PSP games becomes just more bewildering: what other game series has made allusions and references to events that happen in games that weren't even out at the time? God of War 2 mentions Kratos putting Atlas in the position he's in, but Chains of Olympus came out about a year after God of War 2. God of War 3 makes some very noticeable references to Ghost of Sparta ("Your pawn has failed you, Gaia. Perhaps you should have chosen the other one."), but that game hadn't even been announced when GOW3 came out. We even hear a couple of lines directly from Ghost of Sparta in one sequence.
Asura's Wrath is that times 10 in terms of meshing QTEs with the story and character well.
Santa Monica has been doing that since the first game.
Might be because I've hardly ever ended up in a difficult combat scenario with next to no health at the start of it in the other games, but in every other installment I remember the game asking to lower the difficulty instead. In Chains I certainly died enough times at multiple points for that prompt to appear, but instead it gave me extra health.
Isn't that game like 90% quicktime events anyway? I haven't played it.
Might be because I've hardly ever ended up in a difficult combat scenario with next to no health at the start of it in the other games, but in every other installment I remember the game asking to lower the difficulty instead. In Chains I certainly died enough times at multiple points for that prompt to appear, but instead it gave me extra health.
More like 70% cut-scenes/qtes, 10% rail-shooter, and 20% brawling. But they are blended so well in to the narrative, story, and character that it is amazing and a great spectacle. The only thing that sucks is that the true ending is DLC. I really want Capcom to release a complete edition of this game on modern consoles/PC. I do recommend a play-through at least once. I found Asura's Wrath more engaging than most of the old God of War games for me.
Decided to start another run at Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn after rage-quitting at 1-5 last time. Currently at 1-3 with only one failure so far, though it did cost me two incredible levels on Micaiah, who really needs more of those than she usually gets. The story at least starts with an interesting premise, set in a country that was defeated in a war and brutally occupied, but the Dawn Brigade besides being kinda weak as units aren't really the most interesting characters, at least not right away. Still, there's a lot of interesting strategy to the game, admittedly coming from the fact that the Dawn Brigade are too weak to just challenge anything head-on.
Playing on Normal (JP Hard) since that's what I tried and rage-quit last time.
Playing on Normal (JP Hard) since that's what I tried and rage-quit last time.
Dawn brigade pretty much all get replaced as the game goes on so you don't have to worry about them getting crap level.
We don't see Helios or Phaeton either, despite the plot hinging around Phaeton's kidnapping and Helios' personal request to Kratos to rescue him (which I think is brought up in 3). Good game but always felt kinda cheap, like a Netflix Marvel show that keeps naming all these big shots even though they clearly don't have the budget to afford even a cameo.
Only thing I prefer about Ghost of Sparta is that the story felt like it had some relevance to the main games, and set up the beginning of 2 (Kratos' spite and Athena's plan) way better than 1 did.
Still working that Persona 5. I've just started the second palace and I'm starting to really get into it. I actually wasn't feeling it before, Persona 4 was also kind of a slow burn too and I ended up really liking it.
Also snagged up Art of Rally and UnMetal on the cheap, so I'll probably be playing those whenever I feel like switching things up.
Also snagged up Art of Rally and UnMetal on the cheap, so I'll probably be playing those whenever I feel like switching things up.
Playing Rogue Legacy for the first time. Took me a while to figure out how to make any progress over playthroughs. I've boiled it down to picking a miner to farm gold to boost certain stats/classes across generations until I'm comfortable enough to pick a paladin, lock the castle and teleport to a boss. It's hard to tell "when" you're ready but there must be some cleverness to the design or I wouldn't have taken down 2 bosses in my first session ever, cause I definitely don't feel like I've got 100% the hang of it.
I played that a couple years back and never did get very far. I love the idea of it but I always died pretty fast and found it hard to make any real progress. I do want to try it again someday through.
Anyway,
Eastward by Pixpal
I've had my eye on this for a while and having finished Blasphemous finally grabbed it on the Switch and jumped into it. So far I'm enjoying it. It's fucking gorgeous with it's highly detailed pixel art, quite colorful and most of the characters look unique. I also appreciate how even though very little of the dialogue feels "important", it doesn't bother me because it's generally well written enough to make the characters feel interesting(even the unimportant town NPCs). Like they all feel like individual people and not just NPC #15 on the streets and that's a rare feat. Especially impressive since the game was developed by a Chinese team(and apparently a small one at that) but the English feels natural. The whole thing feels like a cross between a Ghibli film, a Zelda game, the quirky humor/vibe of a Mother/Earthbound game and a little bit of the overall structure of "The Last of Us"(but much, much lighter in tone).
It is a slow burn though. The first town is underground in the ruins of a train/subway station and you don't leave it to see the rest of the world for about 3 or so hours and while you're not stuck there because of grinding or anything, you're basically there until the plot puts you on a train to the east because you get banished from the starter town(mostly because the Mayor is a jerk and you've apparently been causing too much trouble). The game up until then is you doing some mundane stuff while hinting about the surface world, which is commonly held to be a place of death, except the trailers and even the intro cinematic tells you that's not true. It does create some impatience to be able to go to the surface and see what the big deal is. It is implied something really bad happened in the past, considering the number of ruins of the modern age you find all over the place, but nobody really seems to care much or talk about it and generally people are doing fine(though the people in the first town living in an underground train station seem to have it the worst). It's remarkably chill for the setting of being set after some kind of apocalypse and so far there doesn't seem to be much plot, but it feels nice to just take it slow and enjoy the ride.
There's also an in game mini-game, a JRPG that I guess is a take on Dragon Quest called Earthborn, that the kids are generally obsessed with and you can find Earthborn terminals to play the game on with a memory card(so you carry your progress with you). I've played some off and on and it's fun enough though I don't know if it has any deeper meaning to it then being a cool little game within a game. You can also find tokens to insert into those capsule machines to get toys out of and I have no idea if this is anything more than just a thing that's there because it's popular in East Asia or if there some deeper purpose to this. Neither of them are distracting for sure, just here's some nice little mini-game to enjoy in town.
That's been my general experience with roguelikes, getting discouraged a couple of hours in by a sense of pointlessness. With Rogue Legacy enough of your accomplishments carry over between each attempt that it never feels like a complete reboot. For me anyway it helps to determine what you're trying to accomplish specifically with every attempt, least of which should be "not to die".
I had fun with Rogue Legacy. It's not the deepest game out there but I remember it feeling pretty good to play. Not very memorable though, since I can barely remember anything about it 4 years later except I watched somebody on Youtube beat the game on the very first character after the tutorial and was very impressed.
I decided to do relay mode in The TakeOver, so I can unlock the trophy for beating the game in that mode. It's basically an idea that was taken from the 3DS versions of Streets of Rage 1 & 2, where you could take the entire cast with you and switch between. The difference being in SoR, you can only switch characters when one died, while in TakeOver, you can switch on the fly by pressing jump twice. You should only switch when there are no enemies around or in training mode. Switching while leaving enemies alive can and will get you hit.
At the end of my playthrough, I managed to get the "Indestructible" Trophy. It boils down to a 1CC game. So that's two trophies in one night. I could have gotten a third, but apparently, getting hit in rage mode (even though you automatically block and it stops all damage) counts as a hit. That is dumb, and not worth trying to get a trophy. The trophy involves not taking a single hit from the final boss.
At the end of my playthrough, I managed to get the "Indestructible" Trophy. It boils down to a 1CC game. So that's two trophies in one night. I could have gotten a third, but apparently, getting hit in rage mode (even though you automatically block and it stops all damage) counts as a hit. That is dumb, and not worth trying to get a trophy. The trophy involves not taking a single hit from the final boss.
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All I remember is that there's a spell or something that create little wisp/fire thing around you're character and if you stand next to an enemy they burn everything super fast and trivialize most of the game.
Trying to find my way back to Senpou Temple after clearing out Ashina Castle in Sekiro. I think it's through the Abandoned Dungeon IIRC. Definitely feeling more confidently aggressive in NG+ though in terms of combat. Genichiro wasn't too much of a hassle this time.
I beat the challenge of Olympus in God of War 3, unlocking the combat arena. I believed this was how you're supposed to unlock the trophy for inflicting a 1000-hit combo, since there's no combat scenario in the campaign that provides enough enemies to do that.
Well, turns out you'll pretty much have to cheese it anyway by finding some sort of loophole to exploit, because all guides I could find pointed to the Skorpion boss, and how you can keep hitting its legs without killing it. So it's not a trophy for proving your combat prowess or reflexes, but by finding an oversight in the gameplay design. Dumb.
Well, turns out you'll pretty much have to cheese it anyway by finding some sort of loophole to exploit, because all guides I could find pointed to the Skorpion boss, and how you can keep hitting its legs without killing it. So it's not a trophy for proving your combat prowess or reflexes, but by finding an oversight in the gameplay design. Dumb.
Reached Chapter 3 of Eastward(prep for thanksgiving ate up a lot of my time this week) and I'm starting to see more Mother/Earthbound influences as well as the actual plot, which decides to show up around chapter 2. So the tone has gone from generally chill to mostly chill but with some bits of overhanging dread. Still quite good though. Haven't felt any need to grind but the stuff you need for upgrade is within chests that for the most part are plainly visible(and you can buy a radar very early on that pings like crazy if you're near one).
Some interesting mysteries starting to pile up now and I'm curious to see why this is all going.
Some interesting mysteries starting to pile up now and I'm curious to see why this is all going.