Board 8 > February Game of the Month Club ft. GRIS, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and Ys II

(+) Yeah! (+)

Februarys Games:
GRIS (PC/Switch/PS4/Android)
Horizon: Zero Dawn (PC/PS4)
Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished - The Final Chapter (PC/PSP/iOS/Android/DS/others)

What is Game of the Month Club?
Game of the Month is a community project open to all B8ers where users share, discover, play and/or discuss a select few games every month. The games featured each month are chosen by YOU the users (and Lady Luck)

The Basics
- Each month will usually feature three games that were chosen via a random drawing from a pool of games that users nominated
- For each game you beat, you get a cool point on our just-for-fun standings as well as a nomination for next month's randomized drawing
- In order to receive the point and nomination, you must beat said game within the calendar month
- If you beat one of the current month's games in the previous month, you can apply for a "recently beaten waiver," but you will only receive a point and no nomination should you do so
- Drawing for next month's games is usually around a week before the end of the month
- If you periodically keep us posted on your progress and/or talk about different aspects of the games, then everyone will think you are super awesome!

Nomination Rules
- You get one nomination automatically each month
- You receive additional nominations each month for every selected game that you beat
- Each game you nominate has to be unique from all other nominations and cannot include a game that has already been selected for GotM
- Each game must be a standalone game that can be acquired and played on its own (aka cannot be DLC/expansion that requires the base game)
- Nominations only carry over if you beat a selected game after the drawing for next month's games but before the end of the month
- As a special rule for only 2021, you have 11 supports you can use throughout the year. Your only limitations are that you can't support your own nomination, and you can only use one support per game per month

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Just-for-Fun Top 20 Standings
KCF - 123
gameking - 110
ArkOfTurus - 69
Mr Crispy - 68
Lolo Guru - 60
Cody - 35
KnightOfNee - 35
MegamanX - 27
Arti - 23
scarletspeed - 23
Wickle - 19
Fenny - 16
tazzyboy - 14
Robazoid - 13
Suprak the Stud - 13
darkx - 11
FakeAccount - 11
GreatPaul - 10
Shonen Bat - 10
MZero - 8
profDEADPOOL - 8
Wigs - 8

Spreadsheet with history
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X8E8oqzES42W4S82j7WTfNnzNa8c3uXdSE1rnqYG7WM/edit?usp=sharing

Additional noms this month
Cody
KCF
JONA

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My nomination theme will be short games (like five hours or less), and I will begin with:

GNOG
Sayonara Wild Hearts

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Like I said, probably skip this month since I've only not played Ys, but we shall see. My nomination will be the elusive Q game.

Nomination:
Quantum Conundrum

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Planning to start Horizon: Zero dawn shortly.

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Committing myself to HZD and I will keep an eye on sales for GRIS.

Nominate:
Yoshi's Woolly World

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Tag

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Underleveled posted...

Committing myself to HZD and I will keep an eye on sales for GRIS.

I've started on Horizon since I know it's a long game, especially with the expansion.

If I'm able to finish that I'll look into GRIS later in the month.

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I bought Horizon: Zero Dawn a long time ago but haven't played it yet so this would be a good time to.

Gonna nominate a game I've been wanting to play through and is on Game Pass currently:
VA-11 Hall-A


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I should begin GRIS later in the day and HZD maybe tomorrow. After looking up how long it is expected to take the latter, I'm probably going to have to play it everyday and for multiple hours.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4onIaSKc6E

Here's a clip of me getting stuck in the wall in HZD. After that happened, the other enemy came near me and I killed it and it was close enough that I could still get the quest item I needed and then I fast traveled to a campfire.

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Oh dear God Ys II sucked.

It was marginally better than the first thanks to the magic system. It gave you more battle options and an escape system.

It still forced level grinding especially in the end dungeon. Easy mode in the re-releases, like Chronicles, helped marginally.

The worst part was the amount of warp-padding and backtracking over the course of the entire final dungeon. Absolutely preposterous.

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Metal has beaten GRIS (again).

Gaming is above all an interactive visual medium, and GRIS excels in leveraging that. There's a certain beauty and elegance to most every aspect of its design (graphical and gameplay alike) that didn't shine quite as brightly for me this time around given how much I still remembered and how many optional objectives I deliberately chased. Still, I would highly recommend GRIS to anyone who doesn't mind a short, mechanically shallow experience and (spoilers?) isn't looking for a densely written narrative.

I'm unsure what to nominate right now, but I will support Sayonara Wild Hearts.

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Horizon is a very pretty game. I'm not very far and I tend to play these types of games slow, so I'm not sure I'll be able to finish this month.

They just opened up the larger world to me and it's like ICONS.EVERYWHERE! Things to collect, side missions to do, seemingly every 50 feet. I may have to resist my completionist urges and stick more to the main line.

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Is the main story longer in the complete edition, or the same length and all the additional stuff is optional?

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Underleveled posted...

Is the main story longer in the complete edition, or the same length and all the additional stuff is optional?

It's the same length, and the additional stuff is optional. Though I think it gives the option of playing through expansion stuff earlier on (I could be wrong on that, I didn't do the expansion when I played)

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One thing that bothers me about Horizon is that there's so much shit in the menus from the get go. It's a little overwhelming.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think they really tutorialized modding the weapons. So I ended up spending a bunch of Skill Points to unlock Tinker, so I could add/remove the mods without losing them. Still not quite sure why some of the mods only seem to work for the bow versus the tripcatcher...

And maybe I missed it, but do they ever mention the fact that ammo is not universal for a particular class of weapon (i.e. the blast ammo for the tripcatcher doesn't work on every weapon in that class).

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ArkOfTurus has beaten GRIS

Very pretty. Gameplay and puzzles were pretty simple, but enjoyable enough. A relaxing experience overall, which I probably needed after finishing Omori.

Nominate Dragon's Dogma

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Actually, Cancel that Dragon's Dogma nomination. It's longer than I remembered it being.

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I started GRIS like two days ago. It didn't give me a strong first impression, but then it finally added a little substance to that style. I'm currently in the forested area, which is currently my favorite place I've been so far.

I've mostly been exploring Horizon, so I have barely made progress outside of the tutorial intro. I want to play more of a stealthy approach, but man those Watchers have eagle eyes. I can be a mile away across water, trees, and rocks, and they can spot me no problem and invesigate my area or even just come after me. I honestly don't know what I'm supposed to do to avoid that, so I've basically just resigned myself that I don't need to crouch while exploring often. I was looking at the map and thinking that huh, I was expecting the world to be larger given the run-time, but then I zoomed out the map. My god this place is massive.

I do agree that menus are overwhelming at least initially and could have been streamlined some. I found out by chance that I could increase inventory size and other stuff through the menus without them bothering to tell me that.

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KCF0107 posted...

I started GRIS like two days ago. It didn't give me a strong first impression, but then it finally added a little substance to that style. I'm currently in the forested area, which is currently my favorite place I've been so far.

I've mostly been exploring Horizon, so I have barely made progress outside of the tutorial intro. I want to play more of a stealthy approach, but man those Watchers have eagle eyes. I can be a mile away across water, trees, and rocks, and they can spot me no problem and invesigate my area or even just come after me. I honestly don't know what I'm supposed to do to avoid that, so I've basically just resigned myself that I don't need to crouch while exploring often. I was looking at the map and thinking that huh, I was expecting the world to be larger given the run-time, but then I zoomed out the map. My god this place is massive.

I do agree that menus are overwhelming at least initially and could have been streamlined some. I found out by chance that I could increase inventory size and other stuff through the menus without them bothering to tell me that.

Yes, I stumbled into the inventory size stuff as well. Those upgrades just keep going and going... But I guess those are the reason to keep killing the non-machine animals.

I like to play stealthy as well. The tall grass is your friend. Also, there's a skill (pretty sure in the first row) that allows you to whistle to attract an enemy. Needless to say, I've done a lot of stealth kills from tall grass.

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Interested in playing Horizon, but not gonna have time this month.

I'll go ahead and nominate Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
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Meanwhile I started Ys 2 a few days ago and progressed through the first dungeon today. I'm on the Ice Cliffs.

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Planning to start HZD tonight.

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I'm about 30% done now with Horizon according to the in-game percentage. I've gotten to the Carja area and done 2 of the Cauldrons. It finally feels like I'm "in it" and starting to get an actual feel for the combat some.

Couple of thoughts:

• There's got to be a way to get a better staff, right? Maybe I've just missed it? But I've got some mods that only go on a spear so...
• Did YOU know you don't have to hold R2 all the way down before you shoot an arrow? You can just tap R2 to spam them. Yeah I know, I AM an idiot for not realizing that sooner. This is what happens when you try to stealth everything.
• Starting hard fights with Tear arrows seems like a good strategy. It removes armor so you can then go to town with fire arrows.
• I don't know if it's the HDR lighting but sometimes it's hard to figure out where to go, especially when climbing.

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My problem with the lightning is with the, I forget what they call it, but the device that points out stuff in purple and blue. The purple moreso than the blue, but it doesn't seem to show up well in sunlit environments, and I'm still in the first area, so that's basically my entire world right now.

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KCF0107 posted...

My problem with the lightning is with the, I forget what they call it, but the device that points out stuff in purple and blue. The purple moreso than the blue, but it doesn't seem to show up well in sunlit environments, and I'm still in the first area, so that's basically my entire world right now.

Yeah, I've noticed that too. Makes me wonder if maybe there's an option in the Settings to change the color...

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might be the first time i've seen two titles i've beaten and one was this month because of game pass, Gris. think that was done the 3rd or 4th, so right before the topic but hey, still the month of Feb. Ys was just long ago, i'm just not used to seeing that in the title.

honestly didn't like it very much. liked the soundtrack but the game's otherwise rather dull as it hits you over the head with the themes of grief, loss, and all that. it was a pretty game but that's basically all it has going for it, couldn't help but think "man, this is an artsy watered down Ori that doesn't even look any better." doubt i'll play it again but it certainly did what it set out to do.

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Oof, I really really suck at HZD :(

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Yeah, this might not be the game for me. Too bad because I was really looking forward to it. I can barely get around because i suck at combat with the machines. I'm also 4 and a half hours in and it says I've only made 7% story progress.

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Yeah, I'm REALLY not doing well with this game. Trying to get to the second corruption area I died about 12 times, and now I can't beat the enemies there.

With all my deaths I've probably played about 7 hours, meaning I'm on pace for this game to take me 100+ hours which just isn't gonna happen.

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Okay I'm getting a LITTLE better but it's still not a great sign that I'm doing this bad this early.

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The machines hit HARD. Abuse stealth as much as possible to thin the herd.

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I unlocked the blue color in GRIS. I thought this was like a 3-4 hour game, but the menus show that there's like a dozen colors to unlock, and I feel like I have played close to two hours. I could be overestimating my playtime, and I can easily check out the figure. The lead-up to unlocking blue dragged on, but I'm hoping this new area is better at pacing.

In HZD, I didn't know that there was a progress counter, and I am up to almost 12% now. I'm going to adhere to the level suggestions for now, and I will probably hold off on doing things like hunting challenges until post-game. I should probably look into getting better weapons because some of my fights have taken nearly all of my arrows (prior to crafting more).

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KCF0107 posted...

I unlocked the blue color in GRIS. I thought this was like a 3-4 hour game.

Steam says I have 2.5 hours after beating the game, so I guess it picks up. But also I only remember there being like 4 colors

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Underleveled posted...

Okay I'm getting a LITTLE better but it's still not a great sign that I'm doing this bad this early.

I've gotten quite a bit better at this. I'm still too weak to take down most of the machines with stealth. I just did the Deathbringer battle at Maker's End which I found surprisingly easy considering I had just encountered two ambushes on my way there which depleted most of my health reserves. Still took me like three tries, but most big machines or battles against large numbers of enemies have been taking me, like, 5-6 tries at least, and half the time I get lucky and have something stupid happen that I didn't intend that takes out the biggest threat.

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The big enemies always took me a few tries. I recommend the ability that lets you notch multiple arrows and the one where time slows when you jump. I always thought stealth was pretty much useless against large machines outside of the first stealth hit.


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It looks like the completion % encompasses all quests in the base game, not just main story quests, which would explain why mine seems so low compared to how long I've played and how many story quests I've done.

Anyway, this game is very overwhelming and I'm going to need to take little breaks from it like to play another game for a day or so.

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KCF has beaten GRIS

For a game that clearly wanted to be more of an art project than a full-fledged game, they packed in more gameplay elements than I would have thought based on the earlier portions of the game. I feel like they could have cut a ton of content though. Elongated chase scenes and busy work just didn't really mesh. There's nothing wrong with having a short game, so I feel like they should have embraced that and just make in a 90 or so minute affair.

That being said, the game really turned a corner in the second half. I was on the fence for most of the game, but the final area ultimately sold me on it being a game worth playing.

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I will nominate A Case of Distrust

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So something I realized I did in HZD to make it a little bit harder on myself. Some of the main story quests don't need to be done in order. I skipped the War Queen and Revenge of Nora quests, not realizing they were part of the main story and just trying to chug along, so I did other, later quests earlier and at lower levels than recommended. I went back and did those, a bit overleveled, and did them fairly easily. Now hopefully I can proceed a little easier. Although according to a quest list I looked up, there are still other quests I haven't found yet that are listed before the one I'm on now, so I dunno.

Anyway, I'm at level 16, with 11 story quests completed and just over 11 hours of gameplay.

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Underleveled posted...

So something I realized I did in HZD to make it a little bit harder on myself. Some of the main story quests don't need to be done in order. I skipped the War Queen and Revenge of Nora quests, not realizing they were part of the main story and just trying to chug along, so I did other, later quests earlier and at lower levels than recommended. I went back and did those, a bit overleveled, and did them fairly easily. Now hopefully I can proceed a little easier. Although according to a quest list I looked up, there are still other quests I haven't found yet that are listed before the one I'm on now, so I dunno.

Anyway, I'm at level 16, with 11 story quests completed and just over 11 hours of gameplay.

I'm level 21 or so I think and I can almost guarantee I've probably done less main quests in more gameplay time. I think the one I'm supposed to be doing now is to go to Meridian. I always find myself just running around the world trying to fill in the map, collect the collectibles, and doing stuff like the Cauldrons.

I've been able to buy a bunch of purple grade weapons which really help. Access to more ammo, and more damaging ammo types and I can use more of the enhancements.

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Update:
I'm now at Lv 19, with 13 story quests completed and 15.5 hours of play. I got the hang of the game for a while, but now it's getting tough on me again. The last couple of missions (and getting to them) almost completely wiped me of supplies and resources, especially health. Getting around is getting much harder because I keep hitting larger machines that I still can't reliably beat, especially when there are two or three around.

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Still only done 9 main missions (level 26 or so). I've uncovered the entire map (aside from the DLC area) and done all the Cauldrons and Outposts. I think I'm about ready to start the main quest again, lol.

It's a little weird to run around areas where you're not "supposed" to be yet and get dialog that doesn't really mean anything to me. I cleared out this one fortification and freed a prisoner who was just like "thank you mysterious stranger, guess I'll get back to it then". Then I think I ran into them later as a named NPC and they didn't acknowledge that happened. Maybe it was someone else...

I've gotten to the point where my inventory is constantly full. I probably don't actually need half the shit in there and if I did, most of it could be gotten back pretty quick.

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Okay, so instead of getting back to the main game I decided to wander into the Frozen Wilds territory. Some pretty neat stuff up there! New weapons (which I can't afford yet), collectibles, animals, etc.

I also have to say that the voice acting and direction seems way better than the little I've done of the main game's story.

Last thing, if you're looking to play GRIS, it's on sale on Steam for the next few days - $6.79 (60% off).

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Last night I finally did a few side things. I did my first Corruption Zone, my first Bandit Camp, and, since it was on the way to the bandit camp, my first Tallneck. Pretty quick experience! I might do a couple more of those things before I get back to the main game.

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Started up Ys.... 1

Luckily these games are pretty short, so I should be able to finish both 1 and 2 this month. The bump system is not really my cup of tea but the music is rad

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MZero posted...

Started up Ys.... 1

Luckily these games are pretty short, so I should be able to finish both 1 and 2 this month. The bump system is not really my cup of tea but the music is rad

The bump system made me quit 1... I didn't like it at all.

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I'm up to 37% in HZD. I've only done about 10 story missions, but even with having purple weapons, I still struggle with certain machines (I don't want to see another giant bird for awhile). Thus, I have been doing some side quests/errands and going through bandit camps and cauldrons for extra experience and capabilities. I don't really like the caludrons from a gameplay standpoint, but I like the rewards.

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Monthly Progress
GRIS - Metal, Ark, KCF
Horizon
Ys II

Nominations
Abacus - Quantum Conundrum
darkx - Yoshi's Woolly World
KCF - GNOG, Sayonara Wild Hearts, A Case of Distrust
JONA - VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action

Supports
Metal - Sayonara

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