by niflhe
The on-going list of games I played for at least an hour or so throughout 2024. (this list is written over the course of the year, so any breaks in time for a game are marked by dashes between paragraphs)
Showing 1-10 of 89 items
My own personal goal this year is to finally, finally finish XC2, a game that I think is interesting, but I'm not sure if I 100% like. It's a few issues all coming together: the combat, even if I feel like I know what I'm doing, never quite clicks the way Xenoblade 1 or X did. Two separate loops that you could be executing at the same time, but it's a gamble if your allies will actually be able to get enough energy or switch to the right Blade. I'm sure there's a nuance here I'm missing, but after spending so long in this game, I shouldn't be crushed by random, same level enemies that are between me and the next story checkpoint. The gacha system is maybe my biggest annoyance, though. Even when you get guaranteed Blades or guaranteed drops, it's still just annoying having to spend so long going through the motions of unlocking Blade after Blade after Blade. If I could spend real actual money to just get a good Blade, I wouldn't, but god I would be tempted. I also don't love the field skill system. If you're going to make me have fifty Blades attached to one character in order to get the one good one, why do I then have to switch out all of these Blades to find the right three combo of guys that lets me pass a random skill check while out and about?! Some of these skill checks are hard gates that you have to pass in order to move on and it sucks every time! I do like using Pneuma to just wreck the balance of the game entirely though. That feels pretty great. --- I did, ultimately, beat Xenoblade Chronicles 2 after mainlining the story to the best of my ability. My feelings didn't change a whole lot, I found the last hour or so of the story pretty annoying, bordering on boring. The final boss having a move that just instantly kills you (and took me three tries to finally beat) is maybe the most frustrating of it all - I did finally figure out a way to get four orbs on an enemy as quickly as possible (basically use Mythra to set up each step and let your team fill in as much as possible before slapping a pure light orb on there) and it was the only time I ever did a Full Burst combo. The fake-out sacrifice during the finale is such an eye roll. But, I'm mostly going to remember my time with the finale of XC2 because I needed to take my daughter to the hospital less than an hour after I rolled credits because she woke up with the worst cough we ever heard and she was wheezing while she breathed. She's fine now, nothing super serious (just croup, which some steroids cleared up), but dang. Weird night.
I was not expecting to be smacked in the face by "it's not a lake, it's an ocean" and an appearance by Saga Anderson within the first ten minutes. --- I'm going along, having a great time shooting dudes with time powers, but then I have to go out of the game (because the streaming in the game is broken) to sit down and watch an episode of TV. I don't think I'd mind a 30 minute long cutscene, but the act of having to go outside of the game just kills me. I'll power through soon, but I've been in gamer mode for a bit now, so I'll have to pivot back when I'm in the mood to watch some shows.
'What if we took the vibes of 2021's Guardians of the Galaxy and slapped a deck builder into it'? 'sold' I'm a sucker for a game with decent writing and a lot of characters to hang out with that I generally like. I think everyone might be about 20% too quippy or jokey and there might be just a bit too much micromanagement between missions. Still, some of the jokes do land and I've been having a good time exploring the greater Abbey environs and upgrading cards, so I think it evens out. I did lose almost an hour and a half of progress thanks to the autosaving only saving at the beginning of the previous day, which is such a wild decision that I almost can't believe it. I haven't had issues with an autosave losing progress in years, how the hell did they manage to mess that up?
I do love how the opening few battles make it seem like it's dishonorable to pull your sword on anyone of a greater rank than you, but afterwards you can just pull out a gun and start blasting. How did Ryoma beat the Masked Man? Blastin'. How does Ryoma beat random thugs out in the world? Spin in a circle while blastin'. --- 'hey did you see that new guy that joined the shinsengumi? 'no, dang, how'd he beat the captain?' 'i heard he pulled out a gun and shot him forty times'
I forgot to equip the hammer for the first few hours and it wasn't until I got the Koopa Shell that I realized "oh wait". I am the dumbass the tutorial messages of "hey make sure you equip this weapon" are meant for. Super Mario RPG is one of my favorite games of all time. Baby's first JRPG if there ever was one, but I loved it all the same. It used to be the game I replayed at least once a year, mostly because of nostalgia, but also because it's extremely short. I loved exploring the nooks and crannys of the reimagined Mushroom Kingdom and I loved bopping along with the music. I even had the strategy guide! Did it help me get those 100 Super Jumps in a row? Absolutely not, best I could ever do was like 30. But I had it and it was pretty neat! Geno is the most nothing character but he's a cool little puppet with a GUN. Incredible. --- I got 95 Super Jumps and then failed. I might actually lose my mind trying to do this. I'm moving through the game at a really fast clip, though - I don't remember the original being quite this breezy. My memories of the first game are a bit muddled from playing it so often, though. I might need to dive back in (now that I know how some attacks are actually timed) and see how tough those fights really were. I mostly remember the gauntlet of Johnny, Yaridovich, and the second Belome fight being a lot tougher. --- Got 100 Super Jumps, i'm unstoppable baby. Nearing the endgame now, got the Lazy Shell equipment and some of the best weapons for my team during the Bowser Castle assault. I have to wonder how you're supposed to figure out the Lazy Shell stuff, I don't remember where it's hinted at in game and I only know it because I had the strategy guide way back when. --- Wrapped everything up in around fifteen hours or so? I thought about doing the postgame stuff, but it looked like the path to fight Belome again was to go through the entire sewers (and I couldn't enter from the end like I can in every other area) and I'm just tired. Nah, I'm good, I'll look up that new Culex on youtube. All told, I had a good time, and this new remake is probably the best way to experience the game, but I do think it's a bit easier than it needs to be. I almost wish there was a "classic" mode or a "original" mode - something that doesn't have the Triple Move meter or the bonuses for keeping your combo going (or, at least, saved it until the postgame). Several of the fights are cakewalks when you can just use the Triple Move to eliminate the bosses entire health pool in one shot. The final boss fight was almost tragically easy - something that I remember being an actual struggle in the original.
I've spent about a dozen more hours with Lies of P since last year and I'm of a few minds about it. It's definitely the best non-From Soft Dark Souls game I've played and I absolutely love tearing through some of the areas. I'm also completely ass at the parry mechanic (even still) and have mostly relegated myself to double dodging and stabbing puppets from afar and whipping out the legion arm shield if I'm out of stamina. I can pull of parries sometimes, but it's not really my strong suit. My strong suit is, instead, recognizing that a lot of enemies will just rush at you so then I can use the glaive mode of the Holy Sword of the Ark to poke at enemies from a distance and almost always two shot them. It's worked 90% of the time and the rest I can usually poke and dive away from to slowly chip away. It's a very Dark Souls 1 'okay just use the lightning spear from Sen's Fortress on everything' type gameplay but hey, it's working. Also working is stocking up on throwing items before every boss. Very few things can take 15 bombs hurled directly at their face. Case in point: The Green Monster boss from area 8 used all of my tricks. Summoning a specter to help, poking from afar, throwing like seven bombs when it got down to low health because wow some of these fights aren't fun! --- Finished the game clocking in at around 20 hours, somehow speeding through the HLTB estimate of 30. My strategy of 'summon the spectre for every fight you can and then never stop never stopping' seemed to work all the way up until the end of the game. Even the final fight, which must be done solo, fell to my strategy of the above along with throwing 21 bombs directly into its face. My final overall thoughts are "huh that was neat" mixed with "dang, i never did get good at those parries". I'm sure there are deeper thoughts out there on the story, on Pinocchio himself, on Geppetto's final lines of P being a useless puppet, on the nature of creation and art itself, how we make art in our image and liken ourselves as gods over our work, but are also remade ourselves as our creations outgrow their need for whatever divinity we claim to be, but I couldn't really bring myself to engage with any of the story beats or plot. I'm sure it's neat! I was mostly just here to stab monsters, tbh.
I love the idea of FE Echoes, but not really the execution. Just taking the old systems, updating the graphics while changing almost nothing else seems like a great idea, but what Fire Emblem has become over the last few years is so diametrically opposed to what Gaiden was, way back when. I still can't get over that you only had to be one over to outspeed. I got outsped by nearly everyone during the last few fights! My Pegasus Knights (all four of them) were getting doubled and do you know what the Peg Knights are supposed to be good at? Not getting doubled! That's their whole shtick! To be fast and not get hit and instead they're just getting slammed down constantly. Everyone is too slow, the maps are bad, magic taking health to cast is an interesting idea but leaves every single mage just getting absolutely annihilated. Just so many weird decisions, all stacked on each other. That final map with tons of boss units was just dire. I did manage to beat it without losing anyone, but it was definitely a slog that basically ended with the final boss surrounded on all sides with only Alm able to do anything resembling damage to it. And then it healed for 40 health. Twice! Jesus. Rough end. My favorite unit was probably Delthea, though she definitely has some issues (namely she can't really utilize Enemy Phase counters because she has almost no HP to start with and what little she has gets shredded with her magic). Sometimes you just need someone to cast a magic nuke and Delthea's your girl.
A neat little GBA action RPG! I'm mostly playing this one so I can get a feel for the gameplay before moving on to the superior sequel. Having a fun time so far, though, I'm a sucker for a centralized dungeon that you return to multiple times over the course of a story and diving ever deeper into. I really loved the Temple of the Ocean King in Phantom Hourglass, is what I'm saying. --- Wrapped this one up in around twelve or so hours. Nothing world-shattering, but I had a good time! I ended up using a combo of a fancy spear and a drill to break boss weapons for the majority of the game and that was a ton of fun.
I haven't been a 'gotta get all the achievements' gamer in quite some time, probably since the PS4 became the dominant platform and ever growing big ol' number on the dashboard faded from view. I'm sure it's still there (i checked, it is, though mine was definitely higher than 55,000 so i'm not sure what happened) but I just stopped the artificial grind for that bigger number. RE3R is the first game in a long time that the bug bit me, though. I wanted and needed to get every single achievement. I pulled up guides to show me which documents I missed and which Charlie dolls I needed to grab. One doll is hidden at the very beginning of the game which is a giant middle finger! I definitely laughed as that was the last one I needed, though. Did I have a great time rocket launching my way through Inferno mode? It wasn't much more difficult than Nightmare mode, which I also rocket launched my way through, which is to say, no, I did not have a great time. I did it though! The final boss was a pain in the ass that I needed like six healing items to beat because just scraping its side would nearly kill me. Did I find it absolutely hilarious when two of the save points I planned on using were just straight up ripped out of Inferno mode? Absolutely. Incredible joke, honestly.
I had a save from a few years ago during my last deep dive into SMT4 that I left off right before the Blasted Tokyo segment, which then leads into Infernal Tokyo and the route lock. I do mean right before, I beat the boss I was standing in front of and then got immediately shuttled to Blasted Tokyo. I'm now officially locked into the Neutral Route, though. I originally was on the Law Route but was able to reload (and refight Kenji because I didn't save right after) to finagle my way to Neutral to see the most content. I haven't quite decided if I'll go do some New Game pluses to see all of extra endings - I have other SMTs to get to and even other SMTs on the 3DS to check out. I looked at my overall playtime (which is just a hair over forty hours now) and I've spent seven whole ass hours just in the Cathedral of Shadows, merging demons. That's...that feels like way too much time. Maybe my one real point of contention in the game - because you level so fast and you're just tearing through these demons due to the rocket tag nature of the combat, you don't really spend a lot of time with any one particular demon before it's fused and fused again. Helpful when you're trying to get skills to your main character, but I often find myself rolling up on a boss battle reviewing what I have at the moment because I haven't thought about team composition in at least an hour. And then just hitting the Megidola button. Or, if I'm being real, Concentrate and then setup with demons, and then pass the turn back to me to Megidola. --- Credits on Neutral Route! Kind of an underwhelming end, especially having to look up guides to find the exact 19 subquests you have to complete in order to become the Champion of Tokyo. One of them isn't even on the quest board! But, I finally did it and felt pretty good about putting to rest this game I bought *brand new* way back when. So brand new, in fact, that I accidentally got two copies of it from Amazon. I didn't get the first copy on the day of release because my apartment back then was awful about letting UPS workers in so they just straight up didn't deliver packages sometimes and Amazon overnighted a new one to me, which then came at the exact same time as the one I preordered. I sent the other one back, I'm not a monster. End of an era, really.