One of the possible rewards for beating certain encounters is an upgrade to a specific weapon, provided you already had it. That's all that is.
What are you currently playing?
- Thread starter Nick Calandra
- Start date
Recommended Videos
What NG cycle were you on? Because I'm only on 3. And spending a few hours doing something boring just for a pointless trophy isn't worth it to me.
I'm about to wrap-up my Persona 4 Golden playthrough. When I started the game I was also playing a couple of other games, reading a book, and watching a TV show but about halfway in I finished or dropped all that other stuff and this game has captured 100% of my entertainment attention (other than listening to music, that doesn't count, music is always in my life).
The real pleasant surprise is that I don't have the fatigue that usually sets in towards the end of a game, where I'm just ready to be done with it. This long-ass game and I'm still enjoying it. It's largely because I followed a guide- I was just not going to spend extra time futzing with persona crafting, it's a confusing and annoying process and I'm letting some smarty-pants on the internet tell me which ones to make so I can see more story beats.
I was already looking into the next one and I want to play Persona 3 Reloaded, but I'm not gonna jump into another one right away I feel that would be madness. Turns out, it's coming to Switch 2 next month, by which time I will likely be ready for it. That works out nice.
In the mean time, I'm considering Xenoblade Chronicles. Seems like a good way to continue the jRPG vibe I've picked up while being different enough to keep things fresh- more action, more world exploring. I open up the floor to opinions on this one, especially on difficulty, pacing, astyle, nd world building
The other game I'm considering is the new Shinobi 2d action thingy. It looks rad! But I'm wary of difficulty in these kinds of games that come out now. Apparently it's made by the studio or devs that made Streets of Rage 4, which I know is a favorite or u/BrawlMan and a high-watermakr for the retro beat em up subgenre so I'm sure quality is not an issue.
The real pleasant surprise is that I don't have the fatigue that usually sets in towards the end of a game, where I'm just ready to be done with it. This long-ass game and I'm still enjoying it. It's largely because I followed a guide- I was just not going to spend extra time futzing with persona crafting, it's a confusing and annoying process and I'm letting some smarty-pants on the internet tell me which ones to make so I can see more story beats.
I was already looking into the next one and I want to play Persona 3 Reloaded, but I'm not gonna jump into another one right away I feel that would be madness. Turns out, it's coming to Switch 2 next month, by which time I will likely be ready for it. That works out nice.
In the mean time, I'm considering Xenoblade Chronicles. Seems like a good way to continue the jRPG vibe I've picked up while being different enough to keep things fresh- more action, more world exploring. I open up the floor to opinions on this one, especially on difficulty, pacing, astyle, nd world building
The other game I'm considering is the new Shinobi 2d action thingy. It looks rad! But I'm wary of difficulty in these kinds of games that come out now. Apparently it's made by the studio or devs that made Streets of Rage 4, which I know is a favorite or u/BrawlMan and a high-watermakr for the retro beat em up subgenre so I'm sure quality is not an issue.
Persona 3 is way grindier than P4. I think people said the remake improves things, but the original was such a slog.
Well, I made it to the end of act 2 in E33. I already had an inkling that things were not as they seemed, and anyone who's played JRPGs before could tell that there was still a lot to see. But holyyyyyy shit I never could have expected this hard of a turn. Now I'm finally seeing why people have gushed about this so much. E33 is now up there with Chrono Trigger, Dark Souls and The Witcher 3. This is not a classic in the making, it's an instant classic. The kind of game that comes along like once in a decade. It's not amazing, it's flat out transcendental. I was slack-jawed staring at the screen for like an hour as wham moment after wham moment landed. I cannot wait to see where this goes next.
Edit: Wait, what? Apparently I managed to be so overleveled that I skipped an entire boss phase in one of the most dramatic and pivotal moments of the game? Goooooddddaaammmiiiiit!
Edit: Wait, what? Apparently I managed to be so overleveled that I skipped an entire boss phase in one of the most dramatic and pivotal moments of the game? Goooooddddaaammmiiiiit!
Last edited:
I am replaying Arkham Asylum to better inform my opinion that the trilogy sucks and Batman deserves better.
Batman has a second bat cave under Arkham Asylum. He tells Oracle that he built it for just this kind of emergency. The cave is huge. As big as his main cave should be. First I have to ask how common these caves are, that he can just FIND one at his convenience. The cave under his mansion makes sense because without the bats that had such an impression on him he would not have chosen them as his symbol. But this second cave... No, it's far too convenient, so I have to conclude that he tore the earth apart, solid bedrock, without Arkham Asylum hearing the massive explosions and drilling. If the developers wanted so badly to feature the bat cave for that precious fanservice, but found themselves in this conundrum of HOW when the asylum is so far away, all they had to do was make it a flashback. Hell, they could have given us the whole mansion in that flashback as well, not entirely unlike fooling around and learning the mechanics in Lara Croft's home. Would have been cozy.
The design of the asylum, likewise, relishes in excess. The floor plan is so weird and many of the rooms so huge (with too many bland hallways in between) that it doesn't even look like a prison or asylum, supporting my point that each of these games with too many villains to tell an interesting story would have worked better as loosely connected episodes. A smaller asylum for a shorter story.
Batman has a second bat cave under Arkham Asylum. He tells Oracle that he built it for just this kind of emergency. The cave is huge. As big as his main cave should be. First I have to ask how common these caves are, that he can just FIND one at his convenience. The cave under his mansion makes sense because without the bats that had such an impression on him he would not have chosen them as his symbol. But this second cave... No, it's far too convenient, so I have to conclude that he tore the earth apart, solid bedrock, without Arkham Asylum hearing the massive explosions and drilling. If the developers wanted so badly to feature the bat cave for that precious fanservice, but found themselves in this conundrum of HOW when the asylum is so far away, all they had to do was make it a flashback. Hell, they could have given us the whole mansion in that flashback as well, not entirely unlike fooling around and learning the mechanics in Lara Croft's home. Would have been cozy.
The design of the asylum, likewise, relishes in excess. The floor plan is so weird and many of the rooms so huge (with too many bland hallways in between) that it doesn't even look like a prison or asylum, supporting my point that each of these games with too many villains to tell an interesting story would have worked better as loosely connected episodes. A smaller asylum for a shorter story.
Last edited:
So jealous. I just could not get past the f***in dodging and confusing levels to get far enough into to enjoy what you and everyone else is
If your criticisms of Arkham Asylum currently amount to "his batcave is too big" and "the floor plan makes no sense", I have to say you're definitely scraping the bottom of the barrel.
There's more, but the bat cave is the dumbest thing in the game so far and my gameplay complaints are mostly the same as with City.
I only did one NG+ and saved scummed most of the endings. I’m not wasting all that time just to get a different ending anymore in games.
Combat is still too automated and bad, but I noticed counters have to be timed more precisely in Arkham Asylum than in the sequels. In City you can just tap the right mouse button rapidly until the enemies hits, but in Asylum that makes you miss and get hit.
I'm well and truly finished with Sekiro now. I did end up getting the platinum because doing the Shura ending on a new game didn't give me the all bosses trophy I had to run through the game again on my NG+ file anyway. I guess it only took around an hour and a half of grinding.
Then I did one more speedrun because I was pretty disappointed in my performance on the first one, and the last boss of Shura took a while to learn. This last one was much, much better. 1 hour 42 minutes save file time to Shura ending. I died once on blazing bull from some atrocious play, but every other boss died on my first attempt, except for Firebender Isshin. I should have won that one on my third attempt, as I had his posture bar completely full and it literally was only 1 more hit to victory, but I got too aggressive and took a hit and went down, then after reviving I didn't heal because One More Hit and then as I struck he did his little stupid sidestep where he gets to pretend he's immune to swords for a second and countered killing me. Then to add insult to injury that triggered the Sculptor's Dragon Rot cutscene and I had to teleport back to Ashura Castle. The next two times I died to Emma because I was so annoyed, then I got the Shura ending on my sixth.
This is kind of what I love about Fromsoft games. On your first playthrough you can take 50 hours slowly exploring the world and learning the bosses, and then later, once you know where everything is, you can just run through the game and get an ending in a couple hours like nothing. Sekiro is pretty much made for speedrunning because almost every item you can pick up in the world is pretty much useless, the only thing I worried about was Gourd Seeds. The only other things I could want was a few snap seeds, Ako's sugar, and divine confetti, and you get enough right on your path as you run by. Also it was really satisfying killing bosses like Corrupted Monk or Guardian Ape and gettting like 10 skill points at once. I mean, I didn't need them after getting the upgraded Mikiru counter, but it was still nice.
Overall, it's a really good game.
Then I did one more speedrun because I was pretty disappointed in my performance on the first one, and the last boss of Shura took a while to learn. This last one was much, much better. 1 hour 42 minutes save file time to Shura ending. I died once on blazing bull from some atrocious play, but every other boss died on my first attempt, except for Firebender Isshin. I should have won that one on my third attempt, as I had his posture bar completely full and it literally was only 1 more hit to victory, but I got too aggressive and took a hit and went down, then after reviving I didn't heal because One More Hit and then as I struck he did his little stupid sidestep where he gets to pretend he's immune to swords for a second and countered killing me. Then to add insult to injury that triggered the Sculptor's Dragon Rot cutscene and I had to teleport back to Ashura Castle. The next two times I died to Emma because I was so annoyed, then I got the Shura ending on my sixth.
This is kind of what I love about Fromsoft games. On your first playthrough you can take 50 hours slowly exploring the world and learning the bosses, and then later, once you know where everything is, you can just run through the game and get an ending in a couple hours like nothing. Sekiro is pretty much made for speedrunning because almost every item you can pick up in the world is pretty much useless, the only thing I worried about was Gourd Seeds. The only other things I could want was a few snap seeds, Ako's sugar, and divine confetti, and you get enough right on your path as you run by. Also it was really satisfying killing bosses like Corrupted Monk or Guardian Ape and gettting like 10 skill points at once. I mean, I didn't need them after getting the upgraded Mikiru counter, but it was still nice.
Overall, it's a really good game.
Silksong has been officially patched. Relics and courier missions net more rosaries, while apparently bench cost has been lowered in some areas. Still think the economy is mildly borked though, and I say that as someone who never lost more than a handful of rosaries to a corpse run. I guess you can now easily farm 150 rosaries by taking supplies from Bellhart to Bone Bottom in just a few minutes, over and over. It's not very fun though. The alternative of delivering to that shop for 180 rosaries instead makes no sense since it's a longer route and you have to pay 30 rosaries to get into the shop anyway, so why bother unless you have any business to do in there.
Environmental hazards now just deal one damage instead of two, which is nice to hear.
I'm baffled by the decision to nerf one early boss, Sister Splinter. Moorwing I get even if he wasn't all that hard. Splinter though is such a breezy, docile encounter, and a good boss at that, I wonder what gives.
Environmental hazards now just deal one damage instead of two, which is nice to hear.
I'm baffled by the decision to nerf one early boss, Sister Splinter. Moorwing I get even if he wasn't all that hard. Splinter though is such a breezy, docile encounter, and a good boss at that, I wonder what gives.
1. A box teleporting into Batman's hands.
2. Catwoman scratching and then kicking herself off a henchman who was already knocked away by Ivy.
3. Batman choking a man who has already fallen out of his arms. (This happened an hour ago.)
The sticky, scripted way Arkham games do encounters sucks. So reliant on prolonged animations that make everything magnetic.
2. Catwoman scratching and then kicking herself off a henchman who was already knocked away by Ivy.
3. Batman choking a man who has already fallen out of his arms. (This happened an hour ago.)
The sticky, scripted way Arkham games do encounters sucks. So reliant on prolonged animations that make everything magnetic.
Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition
Persona 4 revived my interest in long story epic adventure and this looked ok.
So far, about 4 hours in, I'm mixed. The story and characters are ok, don't love it don't hate it, pretty standard fantasy stuff with some personality and I like the setting enough so far. Very cartoonish vibe but not cloyingly so and considering the age of the original I'm giving the style a lot slack so it's fine.
The combat is really weird. I knew it would be more active than an old school rpg but I was not prepared for the tutorial bombardment and the gut-wrenching notion that I'm going to have to memorize a lot of symbols and colors and an excel-sheet worthy mapping of commands and sequences. Because you control up to three characters but you really control one, and you press icons to tell him which attack to do but he does the attack whenever he feels like it (or something?) but then sometimes you have to execute certain status effects, but then also every action has a cool down so there's this awkward timing to everything... I dunno, man. It's interesting for sure but the combination of all the visual information plus the fact that I have to move my character around makes it really hard to wrap my head around. It just feels chaotic and stupid until some cool shit happens.
Persona 4 revived my interest in long story epic adventure and this looked ok.
So far, about 4 hours in, I'm mixed. The story and characters are ok, don't love it don't hate it, pretty standard fantasy stuff with some personality and I like the setting enough so far. Very cartoonish vibe but not cloyingly so and considering the age of the original I'm giving the style a lot slack so it's fine.
The combat is really weird. I knew it would be more active than an old school rpg but I was not prepared for the tutorial bombardment and the gut-wrenching notion that I'm going to have to memorize a lot of symbols and colors and an excel-sheet worthy mapping of commands and sequences. Because you control up to three characters but you really control one, and you press icons to tell him which attack to do but he does the attack whenever he feels like it (or something?) but then sometimes you have to execute certain status effects, but then also every action has a cool down so there's this awkward timing to everything... I dunno, man. It's interesting for sure but the combination of all the visual information plus the fact that I have to move my character around makes it really hard to wrap my head around. It just feels chaotic and stupid until some cool shit happens.
- Apr 1, 2009
- 16,555
- 5,133
- 118
- Gender
- Whatever, just wash your hands.
Silksong really is a watershed moment for Metroidvanias and the new peak for others to chase.
Anyway, for an off game to let my hand rest from Silksong action, I grabbed Tower Dominion. Its a tower defense game where you build up your path as the waves go on, its got a military theme to it and lots of characters to play, towers to build and enemies to shoot. Its also really really good. Its got some roguelite elements such as some tower upgrades showing up after using a tower and new towers and commanders unlocking as you win or lose, but the combat is quite satisfying, enemies are challenging (fuck those stealth guys, they are the cause of most of my problems since not enough towers can shoot them) and the commanders/factions have different flairs so its got some really good replayability.
Anyway, for an off game to let my hand rest from Silksong action, I grabbed Tower Dominion. Its a tower defense game where you build up your path as the waves go on, its got a military theme to it and lots of characters to play, towers to build and enemies to shoot. Its also really really good. Its got some roguelite elements such as some tower upgrades showing up after using a tower and new towers and commanders unlocking as you win or lose, but the combat is quite satisfying, enemies are challenging (fuck those stealth guys, they are the cause of most of my problems since not enough towers can shoot them) and the commanders/factions have different flairs so its got some really good replayability.
I bounced off Xenoblade Chronicles pretty hard after a couple of hours after the game loaded me up with a lot of boring fetch quests.
Tangentially related, but Majuular did a retrospective on Xenogears, the first game in the series, and I thought it was really interesting.
So far the fetch quests don't bother me after I read a suggestion to just grab some of them while doing main quests. As long as I'm at level with the enemies so I can progress that's all I care about. Fortunately when you kill however many of the enemy you need, the quest completes you don't have to go back to the fetch requester npc (so technically not a fetch quest?)
Finished Clair Obscur, final playtime about 35 hours. Man, what an absolute banger. Deserves every accolade and all the hype. A new entry in the all-time greats of videogame soundtracks and stories. Simply stunning and absolutely heartwrenching. Probably going to sweep the GOTY awards this year. The 2020s have been a new golden age of singleplayer RPGs so far, and this is keeping that trend strong. While there are telltale signs of AA budget here and there (the lipsync being the foremost one), this absolutely stomps all over most AAA big budget games.
There's not much to mention beyond what I've already spoken about because the final act of the game is very open-ended: it can take 2 hours or 20 hours depending on how interested you are in exploring all the side content, which there is a metric fuckton of: bosses, weapons, pictos, locations etc. The unfortunate side effect of this is that because the levels are fixed throughout, it's incredibly easy to completely break the game and become so overpowered it ends up kind of ruining the game. I literally two-shot the final boss with the first two attacks I made, which made it more than a little anticlimactic. Chrono Trigger also had a similar situation where you could head to the final boss anytime you felt ready, but Lavos still puts up a fight.
Beyond that I want to talk about the endings:
There's not much to mention beyond what I've already spoken about because the final act of the game is very open-ended: it can take 2 hours or 20 hours depending on how interested you are in exploring all the side content, which there is a metric fuckton of: bosses, weapons, pictos, locations etc. The unfortunate side effect of this is that because the levels are fixed throughout, it's incredibly easy to completely break the game and become so overpowered it ends up kind of ruining the game. I literally two-shot the final boss with the first two attacks I made, which made it more than a little anticlimactic. Chrono Trigger also had a similar situation where you could head to the final boss anytime you felt ready, but Lavos still puts up a fight.
Beyond that I want to talk about the endings:
I honestly had no idea going in what the ending was going to be like. The game's very interesting in the fact that a lot of the time the characters actually know more information than the player, which makes the big picture rather cryptic. This could either be just information being conveyed poorly, or a deliberate method to make the players stitch the big picture together themselves, which I'm leaning on. There's tons of things that just seem weird or inexplicable that only make sense on a second playthrough.
But the endings themselves. You've got a choice between a superficially happy, but kind of existentially dreadful and sad ending, and perhaps the most bittersweet ending I've ever witnessed: the entire world and everyone in it dies except for Maelle, who returns to the real world to finally start healing with her family. I wasn't necessarily expecting a happy ending, but these are both extremely bitter in their own ways. If Maelle stays in the canvas, she retreats into a make-believe world and grows addicted to it, and knows that basically everything around her is false. The only other person who knows the full picture is Verso, who's been basically taken prisoner against his will. I rather wish the game didn't forget about Sciel and Lune so quickly, because their resolutions would at least have sweetened the deal some. It left me with a rather uncomfortable feeling, even though on paper it should have been everything I spent the game striving towards: the Gommage is no more, Lumieré is saved, everyone who was lost is now back, and Maelle can live her perfect life. But it's a fantasy. She is basically god, there's no more stakes or humanity left for her.
Then there's the second ending, where the villains basically win: the Canvas is destroyed, Lumieré and everyone in it get End of Evangelion'd, and Maelle has to go back to being Alicia, a broken lonely girl without even a voice. But it is reality, and the Dessendre family seems to finally be on the path to healing again. Despite it seeming abysmally despairing on the outside, I think it is the more hopeful of the two endings: Alicia is still a Paintress, and as Verso says, she will never have to endure a life she doesn't want to. Lumieré might be gone along with everyone she knew, but she is now free of that, and can paint her own world. Perhaps even bring versions of Lune and Sciel back. It makes me the most interested in the world outside Lumieré, and why I think we're going to get a sequel of some kind: Clea is barely seen, and we get mere glimpses of what the life of these basically sorcerers is in their world. But on the other hand, again, everyone dies, which kind of makes all the moments we saw moot. The reveal that Esquie saved Sciel from drowning was incredibly powerful, but in this ending it's rendered meaningless. Lune finally leaving her parents' shadow, every story about every expedition we saw, they all disappear into the void. You just have to focus on Maelle more
When it comes to endings, it's definitely a "pick your poison" scenario. I can't believe I'm saying this, but most of the endings of Cyberpunk 2077 were more uplifting than this. Barring the suicide one, V gets to at least enjoy some of his time left, or ends up as just a normal shmuck. But then again, was there ever going to be a happy ending in this?
But the endings themselves. You've got a choice between a superficially happy, but kind of existentially dreadful and sad ending, and perhaps the most bittersweet ending I've ever witnessed: the entire world and everyone in it dies except for Maelle, who returns to the real world to finally start healing with her family. I wasn't necessarily expecting a happy ending, but these are both extremely bitter in their own ways. If Maelle stays in the canvas, she retreats into a make-believe world and grows addicted to it, and knows that basically everything around her is false. The only other person who knows the full picture is Verso, who's been basically taken prisoner against his will. I rather wish the game didn't forget about Sciel and Lune so quickly, because their resolutions would at least have sweetened the deal some. It left me with a rather uncomfortable feeling, even though on paper it should have been everything I spent the game striving towards: the Gommage is no more, Lumieré is saved, everyone who was lost is now back, and Maelle can live her perfect life. But it's a fantasy. She is basically god, there's no more stakes or humanity left for her.
Then there's the second ending, where the villains basically win: the Canvas is destroyed, Lumieré and everyone in it get End of Evangelion'd, and Maelle has to go back to being Alicia, a broken lonely girl without even a voice. But it is reality, and the Dessendre family seems to finally be on the path to healing again. Despite it seeming abysmally despairing on the outside, I think it is the more hopeful of the two endings: Alicia is still a Paintress, and as Verso says, she will never have to endure a life she doesn't want to. Lumieré might be gone along with everyone she knew, but she is now free of that, and can paint her own world. Perhaps even bring versions of Lune and Sciel back. It makes me the most interested in the world outside Lumieré, and why I think we're going to get a sequel of some kind: Clea is barely seen, and we get mere glimpses of what the life of these basically sorcerers is in their world. But on the other hand, again, everyone dies, which kind of makes all the moments we saw moot. The reveal that Esquie saved Sciel from drowning was incredibly powerful, but in this ending it's rendered meaningless. Lune finally leaving her parents' shadow, every story about every expedition we saw, they all disappear into the void. You just have to focus on Maelle more
When it comes to endings, it's definitely a "pick your poison" scenario. I can't believe I'm saying this, but most of the endings of Cyberpunk 2077 were more uplifting than this. Barring the suicide one, V gets to at least enjoy some of his time left, or ends up as just a normal shmuck. But then again, was there ever going to be a happy ending in this?
Roll Call.
I mean Zero Tolerance: City Under Fire.
I mean Urban Chaos: Riot Response from Rocksteady.
You're with T-Zero, a riot response team. The city is out of control.
I didn't use the stun gun. Didn't know what to do in the third level and don't know if I'll continue. It's bland. Kind of like RoboCop without the self-awareness or character motivation. It was always a mediocre studio.