Rate the last game you finished!

[Janx_uwu]

I was going to replay Chrono Trigger but then my laptop broke so I switched to replaying the NES Mega Man games on an emulator on my phone, and I just finished the first one.

For games that are considered some of the quintessential 80s experiences, Mega Man is surprisingly unlike anything of the era. There’s almost an assumption you will get hit a lot because health is so plentiful which allows the platforming aspect of an action platformer to take focus and you get the best of both worlds. The “action” aspects are very fun and switching abilities is genuinely very engaging because it allows you to deal with challenges in different ways. You’re missing out a lot if you don’t use powers in levels and save them for the boss like a lot of people seem to do. Speaking of which, the robot masters are easily the highlight even the quality of their boss fights can vary a little. I disagree with the notion that it took Mega Man 2 for the gameplay to hit its stride because the format is done so well here.

The main issues are the significant drop in quality once you reach Wily Fortress and that the final boss was underwhelming, relying on robot master rematches a little too much. The game is of course very brutal and unfair at times but I’d say it’s more forgiving than I originally remembered and I managed to beat it all in two days without restore points so it’s not too BS for me. I played it lots before though so that might be why. Oh, also that platform power up. The fact you might need to backtrack to get that was pretty frustrating and I’m glad that didnt happen in games that followed it.

Overall, I’d very much forgotten how good these games were and I’ve kind of fallen off the Mega Man series lately so it’ll be fun to play Mega Man 2. I haven’t played it as much as the original Mega Man since I usually want to replay the whole series in a marathon but stop after the first game.

The main lemon shots feel way more powerful in Mega Man 1 than they have any right to be

Ini Miney is the most evil character in the series so far

I say she was the most evil so far but I must say, the incredibly brief glimpse we had of Joe Darke was pretty chilling.

I loved that one scene in Justice For All where I went "oh so that's where his level 2 in marvel vs capcom comes from"

 

[Megadoomer]

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (played through the Switch version of Castlevania Advance Collection)

This felt like just what I needed - a relatively short (six hours to basically 100% explore the map - I missed roughly two rooms, though I'm not sure if those were hidden rooms or save points that I thought I passed through when I missed them instead) Metroidvania that was heavily inspired by Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. (the protagonist, Juste Belmont, looks more like Alucard than a Belmont, though he does use their trademark whip, and the area leading up to the final battle is pretty much an exact copy of an area from Symphony)

There were several points where I needed to look up a walkthrough because it was unclear where to go; however, for the most part, progression felt natural, and the castle was a relatively small size so finding my way around it was fairly easy. (though I was definitely grateful when I found the warp rooms)

The game has a money system, but it felt relatively pointless in my playthrough; many of the merchants are limited by certain restrictions (you need to have an odd number of hearts; your level needs to be an even number), and the gear that they sell seemed to be outclassed by what you would naturally find while exploring the castle. One merchant sells an accessory that gives infinite jumps, apparently, but by the time that you can get it, you'll almost certainly have abilities that basically let you do the same thing.

While I didn't like it quite as much as Symphony of the Night or Aria of Sorrow, I had a good time with it. The save/load and rewind features of the Advance Collection help a lot, as they cut down on needing to backtrack in order to find a save room.

 

[NotWilliam]

Uncharted 4 - 8.5/10

 

[Rizen]

Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree DLC

What's to say about the game of the year's DLC? Obviously it's fantastic but let's get deeper than that. How's it hold up to its price and the base game? This will be a spoiler free review. The first thing you'll notice is this is a beautiful word. Elden Ring looks good and SotE gets very creative in many places. The entire map acts more like a huge legacy dungeon than an open world. You can see many destinations above or bellow you divided by steep cliffs but getting there is another matter. You can't just go south for example, you have to find a cave, go through a tunnel and scale a cliff to get there. Nothing is strait forward but that's a good thing. You'll frequently get stumped on how to access an area only to find the way much later by pure chance.

SotE features a wide assortment of new enemies, spirits, items and weapons. You really get your money's worth. Although I will say the frequency of soldier type enemies does make some areas feel like more of the same from the base game. To contrast that, other areas are incredibly unique and a joy to explore. People will warn you about the insane difficulty of the bosses but that really only applies to the final boss. I beat most bosses in a few tries. Fortunately if a boss gets too hard you can always summon other players for help (a feature I wish Sekiro had).

The gameplay is a strait expansion from the base game. You get to do all that fun stamina based combat only more-so. As true with the base game some things are needlessly janky and there's a healthy dose of Fromsoft BS. Jumping in particular is hard to judge and there have been many times when I've died to the Jump King like controls (you have no control over your character mid jump) of simply not judging correctly that a cliff was a little too tall. The game has its fare share of good stuff but loves to troll you by taunting you with an item only to find out it's useless garbage. This happens a lot. I recommend exploring on your own the first time through then looking up what you missed in a guide. There are some fake walls and paths that just seem like total BS to anyone not using a guide. Another annoyance is if you happen to go to the wrong places first you can be completely locked out of an NPC's quest line. This seems like a lot of negatives but overall the game play is incredibly fun and addicting.

My only other complaint is the story, or lack of. You seem to appear in the land and go through it for no apparent reason. As usual the fights seem to be there for the sake of fighting and don't have good explanations as to why they occur. Some of the bosses really make no sense. I could probably dig up more lore by meticulously reading item descriptions but this kind of information should really be given more freely. If anything you're probably the bad guy.

Overall the experience is fantastic and well worth the $40 iirc. Elden Ring is an amazing game and SotE continues this tradition. 10/10

 

[CloudN64]

Code Vein.

There's so much I can say about the game. It's amazing. The OST, the story, characters, and the environments are just fantastic. I loved it and it was beautiful. It's a Soulslike game done right, in the style of an anime. Your character is created by you, so you can choose how to design your character and provide some kind of headcanon for them.

You first start off in a place full of ruins and you cannot remember anything, but you're not alone. You have your attendant with you who's there to support you. Later on, you get to meet other people in the game and everyone has a common goal. The storytelling is just rich and I cannot tell you how much I've been deeply engaged the entire time. Each stage you go through feels like you're always in different areas all the time, so it doesn't get monotonous and repetitive.

You get to choose how you want to play. There's different weapons and different "Blood Codes" to choose from that will help with your playstyle. You can explore areas by yourself or with various companions you get throughout the story. It ranges from sword, greatsword, spear/lance, etc.


As the game progresses, the difficulty also increases too and it can get challenging for certain bosses, but you will learn overtime and its honestly forgiving compared to many other Soulslike games in the genre. Again, you're offered to play the game in many ways as you get the weapons you want and what "Blood Code" suits you as some will give you abilities suited to you or the situation.

The controls feels great and there isn't much I can complain about it, no real flaws. The mechanics of the game is fine as well. You can only pick up limited amount of items like healing items as you play and you also have to be careful not to waste energy as each strike depletes it, as well as dodging.

Overall, I'd say this game is a solid 10/10. It's about $60 dollars on Steam/PS/Xbox (I got it on a sale long ago) and the price is well worth it!

 

[---]

Recently bought a Virtual Boy, so here are some initial thoughts.

Mario Tennis

A solid enough outing for what is mostly a tech demo for the system (was the pack-in game outside of Japan). The oversized character sprites have a lot of charm and the game feels very responsive; the 3D makes it pretty easy to tell where the ball is and the SE ques allow you to tell if it's a light or hard swing by the opponent. Aside from the CPU having strong AI so that it doesn't often mess up, mistakes generally feel honest rather than cheap.

The problem is just how bare bones the game is. CPU-only play, singles or doubles, no special Mario or VG twists on the Tennis formula. The music is pretty forgettable, and the background is mostly black void; sometimes characters such as Boos will fly by, but it's very rare. Sad thing is, even if this game had co-op (I think mods later added it in), best of luck finding someone with a VB of their own to play with.

A solid effort for it's era, definitely better than the Tennis titles before it, but it really needed just a little bit more to push it over the top like an extra mode or more playable characters/background elements. The Doubles mode is surprisingly addictive though.

V-Tetris

There is some graphical 3D flair to the background frames and when you complete a line, but it's simply just Tetris as we all know and love it. To the game's credit, the music is solid and each of the three modes offers two unique backgrounds (so 6 in total) to select from that each have their own 3D flair.

The traditional A & B modes from previous Tetris titles return and are basically unchanged. The big unique draw is Mode C which is made specifically for the Virtual Boy system, and to my knowledge, has not re-appeared as a mode in subsequent titles either.

In Mode C, your playing field has doubled in that you can use the L/R buttons to cycle through the playing field as Tetriminos fall. The 3D effect lets you see the parts of the playing field that you're not actively on in the background. While having double the playing field makes it sound like this mode will take forever to complete, the game will penalize you for only clearing a single line at a time by dumping garbage I Blocks into the background field of play. As you can no longer clear single lines to advance and have twice the playing field, this mode takes an entirely different mindset to get a high score in.

Given it's just Tetris, it's easy to see why it was passed over for a NA release over the more gimmicky 3D Tetris. It's certainly not a must play given just how many ways there are to play Tetris out there, but V-Tetris does do enough to justify it's existance by taking advantage of the system's capabilities in a rather creative way.

 

[Rizen]

Horizon Forbidden West + Burning Shores DLC NG+ play through:

This review focuses on NG+ and will feature spoilers about weapons and builds but not the story.

HFW is the best game ever made bar none. It looks absolutely amazing and everything about it is top quality. It has the best map system, a fantastic and huge open world to explore, super cool enemies including machines modeled after animals, full voice acting, a fantastic sci-fi story and lots of variety in the gameplay. This is the game all other open world games should aspire to.

With that out of the way, lets talk about what NG+ brings to the table. You keep all your weapons, armors, skills and abilities. In the first playthrough there are blocked paths which appear as so on the map that require you to get a new ability to traverse. Thankfully you start with all these abilities so you can immediately harvest the hidden treasures. HFW has an amazing progression system. At first you are forced to run around and swim with limited oxygen. Eventually you learn to ride machines including a velociraptor, breath underwater to explore fully underwater areas and fly freely on a pterodactyl. The only things you don't keep are your overrides of machines, which you gain from beating "caldrons" which are the game's dungeons.

This game was designed with NG+ in mind. It's the perfect chance to try out new weapons and playstyles and complete the quests you missed the first time around. There is a ton of variety in how you can play. The devs cleverly included champion's tokens in NG+, which give you incentive to do activities that would normally give you weaker early game gear. You can trade these tokens for NG+ exclusive weapons. It's a great incentive to do all the activities.

Weapons and builds: In NG+ you can upgrade the weapon types you didn't get around to the first time. There are 10 ranged weapons plus melee attacks all with their own strengths and weaknesses. Although some are definitely better than others. You can also get legendary armors which provide skills for different playstyles. One build is centered around overriding machines to fight on your side and features skills like lasting overrides, which makes the usually limited overrides last indefinitely. It's really fun to pit boss enemies against each other but sadly they will not leave their territory so you can't go on a rampage with them. Another build focuses on melee attacks with damage boosts and other skills but it's still worse than using range weapons with ammo. Some builds increase your steal for sneaking and damage from sneak attacks. One build is based around setting traps and lets you place more traps than usual in the field. The most overpowered build however is the low health build which gives you an 80% damage boost at low health. This seems like a high risk, high reward build but other skills increase your defense and give you a second chance to survive killing blows on one HP so it's actually not any more dangerous than full health builds, hence the overpowered aspect. I wish I'd learned about this sooner but it is heavily reliant on you possessing the right skills.

Overall NG+ brings a lot of freshness and variety that keeps you interested in playing. HFW has a ton of content; I spent well over 200 hours on my file. It's almost as fun the second time as the first playthrough. I can't recommend this game enough! 12/10!

 

[Rizen]

The Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom

Like Peach, Zelda got her own game but unlike Peach, it has wide appeal to adults as well. The main premise of the game is Zelda can't attack herself (except under limited conditions) but can summon echoes or copies of monsters and objects from the world. She uses these to beat enemies and solve puzzles across a top down but still 3D world. At first I was worried it would be too easy and kid oriented but the puzzles proved quite innovative and a few made me scratch my head. The combat with echoes is kind of like a tower defense game in the sense that enemies have very limited movement and attack options. This leads to a lot of strategy in picking just the right enemy echo to combat the current threat. ...at least until you get level 5 super powerful echoes at which point you just rely on them. Zelda can enter a powerful Link esk sword fighter mode where she can slash with a sword, shoot arrows and throw bombs freely but only until she runs out of energy.

The Good:
The echo system is highly original and brings a fresh and addicting perspective to combat and puzzles. It's super fun to explore and find new echoes. There have been several times when I found an echo and though "I know the perfect place to use this". It has a pretty basic story but at least it's there to keep the game flowing. The world is a joy to traverse in creative ways and filled to the brim with goodies to find. Overall I had fun and felt challenged the whole game through.

The Bad:
Echoes of Wisdom is very rough around the edges and in many ways seems low budget. The biggest complaint is that to choose an echo you must scroll through a long single file line of all your echoes, a problem Tears of the Kingdom also had. This was an intentional and incredibly boneheaded design choice by the developers. It could have been so much more convenient with a grid layout and the ability to save your favorite echoes.
The map system is as bare-bones as it gets. I remember thinking "why is the map the same brown and green all over when I'm in a snowy mountain. It should be white here!" It severs its purpose but is in many ways unhelpful except for the raw basic functions.
The game looks fine but in 2024 it could look a lot better. It copies the plastic toy like style of Link's Awakening Remake which was fine for that game but for a brand new game it's underwhelming. It looks very much like a video game laid out on a grid and not like a real world, even stylized. For example, the grass grows in perfect square patches. There are many areas that are simply filled in by trees you can only walk on top of which serve as a sort of walls.
There are many times you level up your partner thinking you'll get a good new ability only to get a useless upgrade. The Sword Fighter energy system only gives you refill energy when beating dark monsters. In many places there aren't any and in some places they're all over. This lends itself to an imbalanced use of the mode.
The game has no voice acting. You get a companion but it's basically an exposition machine with very little personality. Zelda's another silent protagonist which makes her feel very similar to Link; I wish she'd been given her own lines and personality. Overall there are a lot of, for lack of a better word, cheap design choices that make the game not feel particularly special but instead like just another game.

The Verdict:
Echoes of wisdom has it's shortcomings but remains incredibly creative and fun. I'm greatly looking forward to a sequel where the creases are ironed out. 8/10.

 

[---]

Some quick opinions:

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir (Switch)

Can't say I have the most experience with Visual Novels so nothing really stands out to me as flawed in gameplay. There are a few parts where it's easy to get stuck and not know what text option to select or even how many times to select it without a guide; at one point the game has to select the "Case Over" option which is the Saving/Resume later option to continue as a curve ball.

The story is solid enough, at least for the first two-thirds. Without spoiling, it's really not that hard to deduce the true mastermind once all of the players are established. The only real confusing aspect is how it refers to two key players who are referred to constantly but have next to no screen time but all of the plot relevance making it hard to say if it's amateur writing or purposeful to throw Readers/Gamers off the trail.

Jack Bros (Virtual Boy)

A unique twin-stick shooter/maze game. It's really hard to describe, but I guess the best comparison to it might be Gauntlet. The only real flaw is that it feels like it ends a bit too early right as the game starts finding it's groove. You do have 4 different playable characters and a Hard Mode (that significantly changes enemy numbers/placement) so there's a lot of replay value, but I feel if they had just stuck it out for 100 floors to travel through instead of 60 (the final stage making of a third of those) it would be even more fondly remembered.

As it stands, it's easily the best or 2nd best (I haven't played Wario Land yet) VB game and is honestly just a great game all around regardless of system. It also has a fantastic soundtrack that really shows off the chiptune potential of the VB hardware.

Sonic x Shadow Generations

For the Sonic part of the package, it's the console version of Generations that is still fun to play to this day. There really isn't much different to it aside from Chao being added to each stage that act as new collectables and add a bit more life to the White Space hub world. It's almost a shame that not more effort was put into this part of the package given they had the ability to seemingly edit cutscenes.

The story aspect was always the weakest part, and I think they really could have done more. I get all of the effort was put into the other game in the package, but it would have been nice to have gotten something extra like a new stage (it still feels mind-boggling they didn't release DLC for the game back in 2011/12) or adding in new music tracks/skills/etc. I'm shocked the remixes from the 3DS version weren't added in just for the heck of it.

Shadow Generations feels like a title that's mostly made for hardcore Sonic fans rather than causal fans. Right off the bat, the overall design and stages expect a lot more from players in terms of needing to manage Shadow's moveset on the fly. The game really loves bottomless pits, and you will probably fall into a lot of them. The biggest flaw really comes down to Shadow's moveset as the game does a poor job of teaching/communicating the mechanics of some of them; if I'm seeing that I'm not the only one needing to look up a YT guide on how to use the Doom Morph/Wing, that's a direct failure of game design.

All that aside, once you get past the higher learning curve, the stages are arguably more thrilling than those in Sonic Generations. The Challenge Stages and Bosses are fewer in number, but the quality is so much higher. Navigating White Space is a lot of fun though with the sheer number of collectables, it'll really make you wish it came with a better map system to mark locations you'll want to revisit. I'm not a Shadow or Adventure series fan in the slightless, but I really did enjoy the story and the ending really made me feel for the character.

I'm not sure if either part of this package is the best entry point for newcomers to the series, but it is certainly an amazing package all the same. If SEGA is smart, they'll release additional DLC beyond the extra Sonic 3 movie stage next month.