Board 8 > Post Each Time You Beat a Game: 2023 Edition

(+) Yeah! (+)

Defense Grid 2 (PS4)

Bought for some dumb TrueTrophies challenge where I needed trophies in strategy games, this is a tower defense game where you protect a base from aliens trying to capture the energy cores from the base. There is also a story between the AIs that you meet throughout the levels. The campaign itself is only 20 levels, so it doesn't overstay its welcome and it's somewhat fun to make these elaborate mazes out of the levels they give you. I will probably try for the platinum at a later date.

The Messenger (PS4)

I backed Sea of Stars and that's finally releasing at the end of next month, so I figured it was probably about time I went through Sabotage Studio's first effort.

Very good game, falls just short of great for me. I think it's better as a linear platformer than it is as a Metroidvania, and all of the meta humor is a big turn-off for me in media. The OST is excellent, though, and when the writing does get serious it's actually pretty awesome too, which gives me even more optimism for Sea of Stars. It mostly nails the platforming and bosses, too, even if they're kind of on the easy side a lot of the time.

Don't feel like I really have much interesting to say here. Just really solid.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

I had a nice time. Can say pretty confidently I liked it more than BotW even though most of my experience with that game is a blur at this point, though I'm pretty sure I like this one more precisely because I had that foundation of having some previous experience and knowledge of the mechanics/world already. That's probably reflected by the fact that this time around I beat the game after playing for 2 months on and off as opposed to BotW where I played for a while, got an ending and then put it down for 2 months (or probably more idr) before I went back to do the rest of the story stuff.

Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter
This is just an expansion, so I don't know if it counts as a separate game, but whatever. Not very good, but I wanted to finish it anyway.

Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line (GBC)

I started playing the Dragon Quest games last year as one of the RPG series I've not played in the past which I wanted to check out for contrived reasons, I played 1-4 at that time but only finished 1 mainly owing to how grindy the first 3 were and 4 surprising me with its length. Having come back to an ostensibly more streamlined version of it, it still feels pretty grindy but also somewhat better paced than what I was expecting, at least until the endgame where you're expected to grind 10+ levels between when you get to the final area and when you storm the main bad guy's castle. Still, I'd say it feels like a more polished experience overall which is probably a good thing for the followup to the game that's sometimes considered "the" granddaddy of JRPGs (which from what I remember is itself more than 90% grinding despite its short length), and since I put it on my 3DS which I jailbroke recently I was able to fit the more lengthy grinding sessions into some downtime I had during work and other times.

God, Dragon Warrior 2 (NES) is crazy grindy. It's terrible even with fast-forward.

Mega Man 9 (Wii)

Just another good 8-bit Mega Man game. Wasn't a huge fan of the Wily stages this time around, unfortunately, but everything else is really solid and the OST is one of the best.

Fairune 2

I vaguely remember playing the first one on mobile years ago and liking it. This one was a bit of a contrast to that; even though the game is short, it still felt padded for the kind of gameplay it has. There's quite a few moments in the game where you're expected to notice some extremely subtle graphical details to tell you something is different and hides a secret path that leads to something necessary. I was also surprised by the fact you're expected to collect pretty much everything to make it to the end despite a lot of the things you come across striking me as optional at first, and a good bit of unexpected backtracking especially later on which is required to progress with whatever the newest place you're exploring is. My end runtime was apparently just under 7 hours but it definitely felt longer.

Cats Hidden in Italy
What a ridiculous series I've been playing.

Final Fantasy XVI (PS5)
Finally. My evaluation is that it's quite a good game with a few flaws that are generally forgivable. It's not at the top of the character action genre and barely even nods to the number-crunching aspect of RPGs, but it tells an interesting fantasy story with likable characters, entertaining battles and straight-up ridiculous setpieces.

Gato Roboto (PC - Steam)

Quirky fun little Super Metroid/Mega Man hybrid. Very short. Like they made it just long enough to not be refunded lol.

The movement was very fast smooth and intuitive. By the end you are really going.
Overall, the game was rather easy lol.

The story had a lame ending and after beating the game you can't go exploring for anything that is missed....so those 2 upgrades I missed? yeah I don't think I am playing through again to find them lol, but overall it was a decent time.

Oh, my MAJOR gripe though is that this game lagged really badly when in full screen mode. It's capped at 60 FPS during windowed, but if you make it full screen it tanks to 35-40 FPS. Which wouldn't be terrible if the game speed wasn't directly tied to the FPS, so as it's jumping around so is your character lol. Windowed mode is kinda small on a 4k screen <_<

Xtlm posted...

and after beating the game you can't go exploring for anything that is missed....so those 2 upgrades I missed? yeah I don't think I am playing through again to find them lol, but overall it was a decent time.

The game explicitly tells you about a point of no return when you reach the final area. The game is pretty self aware on that.

When games mention point of no return, that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't go back and collect stuff, and it might be more likely that you can with more recent games. In many cases from my experience, a game that says there is a point of no return will mean that after you beat the final boss or whatever, you will return to the point of no return and you can go back and do stuff or proceed to go through the final segment(s) of the game again.

Yeah I've basically never seen a game do an endgame point of no return the way Gato Roboto does, especially in a Metroidvania. I guess Dark Souls, since it boots you straight into NG+? In any case it's pretty annoying, and the warning could be much clearer.

Mega Man 10 (Wii)
Eh, not the best, not the worst. Might have one of my favorite lineups of weapons in the series, though.

Full classic series ranking without thinking about it too terribly hard: 2 > 4 > 3 > 9 > 6 > 8 > 10 > 5 > 1 > 7

Vampire Survivors (Steam)

This game is so stupid (complimentary)

I have a couple more achievements/secrets to get but I killed the Director and Je-Ne-Viv so I think that's enough to call it beaten.

Golden Sun has a point of no return that locks you out of your save file if you save upon beating it, but it does warn you that this is the case and I believe it allows you to save it onto an empty slot if you desire rather than over your still-playable pre-final-boss data.

Final Fantasy 7, the Switch port.

3x speed, no encounters, and battle boost are amazing. Only really used battle boost for grinding the gold saucer arena for Omnislash because *heck* doing that all over again in one sitting. Still didn't even make me immune to RNG, got accessory broken, toaded, then an enemy berserked me. An enemy that can heal himself. It took him forever to kill me once I finally relented and turned boost off. A hilarious punishment for cheating I suppose.

Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons (PC)

Tokens are used to earn Characters, Tips, Art, Music
You can set Continue type to Infinite, Permadeath, 3 Tokens
You can adjust Player Health, Revive Cost, Upgrade Cost, Enemy Stats, Enemy Aggression.
Adjusting these will mainly affect your payout on Tokens to unlock stuff.

The roguelite aspect is very minimal. You can do any mission in any order. It's encouraged to try them all out in each session cause you can go through different paths/mid bosses depending on how you do the order of the stages. Some of the bosses even have a completely different gimmick/attack pattern at Mission 4. I have a preferred order so I don't do any of the gimmicky stage hazards that annoyed me.

At the end of each stage, you get a choice of power ups to enhance your characters.

Game is fun. I actually like to plan out and approach the enemies to kite them around to do Crowd Control. Doing successful Crowd Controls will get you Food pick ups. When you're at max health you can pick up the food for more money.

Majority of people are complaining about the part where when you do a Crowd Control it brings up a CROWD CONTROL graphic where it stops the gameplay flow a little to remind you that you did a CROWD CONTROL when the food item appears. This actually didn't bother me. This is one of many things that people are requesting for an option to turn this off/remove

My preferences of the characters: Billy/Jimmy/Uncle Matin/Marian
All the characters are honestly good in their own ways. You can't really choose wrong. Billy is basically my comfort character. Jimmy is a close second and I think Uncle Matin is awesome. Marian is fun but doesn't suit my style.

The final stage got me heated a little until I figured out the PRO STRATS. I was a little stressed for my first time but kept my cool.
The OST is awesome.

Verdict: This game doesn't suck. Certified GOGZero game. Double Dragon is slowly getting out of the pile of suck it has been drowning in since Double Dragon IV. You love to see it.

Double Dragon IV (PC)

I had an excuse to replay this game. This is one of the few games I own on Steam that didn't have a cloud save. Beat the game and unlocked all the characters again from the Tower Mode.
My opinion about this game still stands: This is still the most disappointing entry in the series.

Samurai Shodown IV: Amakusa's Revenge (PC)

I never truly got a handle on this one, but I still somehow beat it.

Final Fantasy (GBA - Dawn of Souls)

I've never beaten any version of this game before except for one time I ran through the NES version with god mode game genie cheats on in the space of a few hours. The grinding/leveling pace in this one feels very smooth. Suspiciously smooth for a game that old. But at this point that's probably a good thing.

MANOS: The Hand of Fate ~ Director's Cut (PC)

"Retro platforming action in this adaptation of a terrible movie."

This game is based on a movie from 1966.
This game was developed by FreakZone Games who also made Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures.
All of the context is lost on me except for a few references to other NES games.

The game itself: It's fun and very fair IMO. There are power ups called Hands of Fate that give you life extensions. This game gives you a lot of 1-Ups. The checkpoints are very good and well placed too.. I got through it in 24:52 my first time through. This game definitely reminded me of the AVGN's game aesthetic and gameplay.

Not a bad game for a cheap price!

Like a Dragon: Ishin!

game was so badass

just a bunch of manly samurai men fighting it out and talking through their problems in the most earnest way possible

and theres a little farming mini game to make you money so you can upgrade your swords

it helps a lot if you know the edo periods history with sakamoto ryoma and the shinsengumi before you go in btw

anyway 8.6/10

Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 (XS/X)

I beat the first one around my birthday, and nearly seven months later, I have also done the second. It's just a good, simple and addicting tactical dungeon crawler without an actual dungeon (it makes sense to call it a dungeon crawler if you play it). It's a cookie cutter plot and cast of characters, so I get just enough of a sense what's going on to get the context and skip the rest. It helps keep the pacing humming.

Macbat 64 (PC)

Short, sweet platformer without fail states that obviously is meant to emulate some of the N64 platformers in appearance.

The King of Fighters (2003) (PC)

I didn't know any of these characters, but the two that I picked out ended up being pretty good, or at least good enough to get me through single player. It was pretty nimble for a 20-year-old 2D fighting game.

Art of Fighting 3: The Path of the Warrior (PC)

Unlike the previous game, I couldn't get a handle on some of the more elaborate moves, so I stuck to a pretty plain gameplan, and it somehow worked.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game (XB1)

Beat it as Kim. If I had to do it over again, I would not play it solo. It is really rough at the beginning and grindy doing it solo.

KCF0107 posted...

Macbat 64 (PC)

Short, sweet platformer without fail states that obviously is meant to emulate some of the N64 platformers in appearance.

OMG someone other than me played this. Yay

Soul of Darkness

This game was pretty much exactly what I had been led to believe it would be, and that's legally distinct Castlevania with checkpointing on each screen. That latter part may seem lame, and it kind of is but overall it honestly makes getting through some high jank parts of the game more palatable, especially considering how for the last couple stages they bizarrely appeared to take oddly specific inspiration from some of the most frustrating bosses in classicvania, namely those from the later stages in Belmont's Revenge. Though the "story" if you wanna call it that is a lot more like the one in the first few seconds of Haunted Castle in terms of abrupt randomness.

Night in the Woods

im pretty late to this one, but its great adventure game about millennial dread. love the art style, music, and writing + characters. a definite win for kickstarter games. shame about the creator

Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Switch)
Played through in co-op with my fiancee where I handled Kirby for the first ~half and then she took over for the latter half. Definitely a lovely game to play with someone who's somewhat familiar with video games but wouldn't consider them among their primary hobbies. It's just such a pleasant series.

For its first real foray into 3D, I'd call it a huge success. There's a good selection of copy abilities and all of the different side objectives in the levels are fun to hunt down. I enjoy the progression of building Waddle Dee Town up, too - that sort of thing always goes over well with me. Bosses are kind of whatever but that's true of almost every 3D platformer ever.

We'll probably make our way through the post-game stuff at some point too because we definitely didn't tire of the game yet. Upper-tier entry in a consistently good franchise.

Gravity Rush Remastered (PS4)
Had this one on my radar for a long time but, like most of the world, I never owned a Vita. And by the time I got ahold of a PSTV, the price had already risen to a point that I didn't really care to pick it up for. Enter the remaster!

This game has a lot of cool stuff going for it. The gravity mechanics that make up the main draw of the game work pretty well, generally speaking, and the world you get to explore with them is right up my alley conceptually, beautifully built in an art style I quite enjoy. The comic-booky bits of storytelling are done well, too. Kat is an extremely likable protagonist, though certainly not the deepest.

The connective tissue is where things falter. Gravity Rush is at its most charming in the beginning where you're mostly guiding Kat along some low-stakes adventures that would almost qualify as slice of life were it not for most of them going horribly awry in some way for the sake of getting combat into the mix. Things get pretty repetitive pretty quickly, with said combat not being nearly deep enough to justify the amount that you have to do it. And the story ends up having waaaay too much going on for such a short game, to the point that it kind of just devolves into nonsense by the end. You go on several distinct adventures throughout 21 bite-sized chapters, and they're only tangentially related. Most of them are pretty interesting, really, but they get such little focus that they all end up feeling like wastes.

Overall, I liked the game well enough that I'll likely play the sequel one day but not enough that I'm going to make that a big priority.

Gravity Rush 2's story is more in the way and more eye-rolling, and I'd say that the gameplay is downgrade. They never made an attempt to fix things up as a game built for console this time around. It comes across as more sloppy and imprecise. At least the first one had an amusing charm as a handheld game that was later ported to console.

I would definitely bury playing 2 on your priority list.

Isles of Sea and Sky Demo (Steam)
A rare exploration Sokoban. The last kinda similar thing I recall is Toki Tori 2. It's got sort of a Zelda setup where you collect items and tools to be able to open gates and solve previously-impossible puzzles. It's a bit cryptic, usually just enough; not Tunic by any means. I look forward to the full game.

Sprung: The Dating Game

It's about as deep as the name would suggest. It's certainly a breath of fresh air from current year sensibilities though and even if the story is pretty crap and the whole game is pretty much nothing but dialogue tree puzzles it does have some pop culture shout outs sprinkled in that can be pretty genuinely witty sometimes as well as tons of unique responses if you're willing to mess around with all the options just for the hell of it.

Picross 3D

I had forgotten how many of the late game puzzles really feel like they expect you to cheat or guess. Probably not the most egregious example of this I've seen though.

The Solitaire Conspiracy (PS5)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/80531196

The Solitaire Conspiracy is a different take on a game of solitaire, where each suit represents a different spy group. Each suit's face cards has a separate 'power' when placed on a column - one group sorts the column in numerical order, while another group randomizes the cards in the column. The campaign itself takes about two to three hours at most, while you have some FMV cutscenes of Greg Miller talking to you through most of them. It's a pretty barebones story that's also pretty predictable, but it works for the game's length. The platinum trophy requires only completing the campaign, doing a few skirmishes, and then reaching wave 15 in a survival mode where you are timed on your progress... which I managed to do on my first try and was no challenge at all. I liked the game enough to continue playing a bit more after the platinum to unlock the last two spy groups, which you can only do after completing the campaign for whatever reason. It's a bit weird though how this game is PS5-only when it was ported to PSN (not the case on Xbox).

KCF0107 posted...

Gravity Rush 2's story is more in the way and more eye-rolling, and I'd say that the gameplay is downgrade. They never made an attempt to fix things up as a game built for console this time around. It comes across as more sloppy and imprecise. At least the first one had an amusing charm as a handheld game that was later ported to console.

I would definitely bury playing 2 on your priority list.

Good to know, thanks for the tip! That's certainly disappointing. Lot of squandered potential with this IP, it seems like.

Aggelos (Switch)

I had been playing this off and on for about a year or two and finally got through it. It's a mostly solid retro-style action game. It has some random difficulty spikes, and as a non-precision platformer, I think some of the platforming has some unrealistic demands of the player.

Metal Slug 4 (PC)

Of the four or so games from the series that I've beaten, this might be my least favorite? IDK. It just seemed it was more egregious with the aggressive enemies who come out of nowhere that you can do nothing to avoid their attacks, which sucks when its one hit, and you die and lose your weapon.

Metal Slug 3 is a masterpiece of its genre then 4 kinda drops the ball

Once Upon a Jester (PC)

I love how the developers just did most of the voices. The amateur feel of it really adds to the charm of a dumb and silly game whose tedious loop would have been larger felt otherwise.

The Solitaire Conspiracy (Switch)

I had to laugh that I started this a couple days ago, and soon after, someone had just beaten it. I don't care for normal solitaire, but there have been numerous video game versions that I do really enjoy. This one is probably the best. It has a great presentation, nice mechanics, and it felt challenging without being unfair or overwhelming. It's probably my favorite Mike Bithell game, and I've liked all of them (this is the fifth one that I've beaten).

Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders from Planet Space (Vita)

Been playing this on and off for a few years now, and finally cleared the last mission today. There's not that much to the game besides shooting through hordes of giant insects and alien aircraft, but it's fun regardless.