Board 8 > Post Each Time You Beat a Game: 2021 Edition Part II

(+) Yeah! (+)

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom (Switch)

Very solid Metroidvania, albeit without the Metroidvania "feel". The game's pretty long (it took me about 16 hours) but the end came pretty fast once I got there.

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Kingdom Hearts (PS4)
If you're from my playthrough topic where I had an epic meltdown likely the result of my spiraling mental health, here it is, I finally finished it. I wasn't sure I was going to but a couple weeks ago I was at a Halloween party and I shit you not multiple people brought up this game in separate conversations and it reinvigorated my will to finish it, so between yesterday and today I finally did (MAN that lost time from the world rush -> Chernabog -> enemy rush that I never finished really did a good job at killing it initially). Interestingly I found three of the four endgame bosses to be extremely easy comparatively. I beat Ansem I on my first try, Darkside was a joke, and while Ansem II was tricky, I think I beat him on like my 3rd or 4th try? Far more quickly than Chernabog or the enemy rush. Only the final boss was hard and while it made me truly frustrated and cursing up a storm once again, I think it still took me fewer tries than the battles leading up to the first Ansem.

Okay, the game itself. I finally started playing this because a few years ago my brother gave me Kingdom Hearts III for Christmas one year thinking I was a big fan of the series, when in actuality I had only ever played Chain of Memories (since I only ever had Nintendo systems growing up and wanted to give the series a try) and little bits of KH1 and Days. I think in this particular game I had previously made it up to the Tarzan world before calling it quits. Despite my epic meltdown I do think it was a good game. I liked the gameplay and appreciated that it wasn't overly complex to where stuff like extreme customization was practically mandatory. Obviously as a Disney fan I enjoyed seeing all the different characters and worlds (fuck that Little Mermaid world though; really a shame because that's my favorite Disney movie), and the original worlds and characters were very nice as well. My biggest gripes (aside from my fuming at difficult battles) are the Gummi Ship levels which I really hated and could have done with them being completely deleted, and the fact that my allies weren't that great, which I've heard is a common problem in KH1. Even after finding pretty optimal behavior settings from them, they still loved to just stay in front of gigantic attacks and get themselves killed. Another personal problem I had was that I found some of the world progressions confusing and sometimes after a cutscene I'd spend a very long time exploring the world before I could trigger anything new, and often even had to look up exactly what I was supposed to do to progress. Not sure if that's a common problem people had with this game or just me.

You know it's funny, looking at what people have to say about the difficulty of bosses, for the battles that I had the most issues with (Ursula, Dragon Maleficent, Chernabog, enemy rush, and World of Chaos/Ansem) the consensus seems to be "yeah they're tough but just keep pushing through" while two battles that people have identified as brick walls for first time players (Riku-Ansem and the 1v1 with Ansem, the one after Darkside) really didn't give me that much trouble.

I really thought I'd have a lot more to say but I'm kinda overwhelmed and also have a lot to do this morning/early afternoon so I'll cut this short. I'm glad I finished it and while I sometimes feel really ashamed and embarrassed after finishing a game that was tough for me this time I actually feel more accomplished. I will continue the series. Even though I played Chain of Memories years ago, I will play Re:CoM as a formality. I don't remember it being that long, so I may as well.

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Salt and Sanctuary (PC)

The original "2d Soulsclone" beat. Excited for the sequel next year.

This game....is okay. I super hate the platforming and there are alot of stigmas this game brought that eventually petered out once the rest of the soulsclones came in. It is not a fun game but it has the charm of probably being the closest to a DS clone which the author admits I think.

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Broken Age (PC)

Other than the kind of misfire hipster stuff, this was quite funny from start to finish. I wanted to like this more, but I honestly found the ship segments, which comprised of roughly half the game, to border on being a slog. Still, I loved the other half of the game, the characters, art style, and aforementioned humor.
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Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania (Switch)

At times this game had me question why I continued playing it, it was insanely difficult. And the spikes were so random. But other than that, it was a really fun game. I'm not sure why, but I enjoyed this one WAY more than Banana Blitz which I never finished.

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Underleveled posted...

You know it's funny, looking at what people have to say about the difficulty of bosses, for the battles that I had the most issues with (Ursula, Dragon Maleficent, Chernabog, enemy rush, and World of Chaos/Ansem) the consensus seems to be "yeah they're tough but just keep pushing through" while two battles that people have identified as brick walls for first time players (Riku-Ansem and the 1v1 with Ansem, the one after Darkside) really didn't give me that much trouble.

I agree that Riku wasn't a terribly difficult fight, tbh I was surprised that so many people had issues with it. On the other hand Maleficent Dragon just destroyed me over and over.

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ViolentAbacus posted...

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania (Switch)

At times this game had me question why I continued playing it, it was insanely difficult. And the spikes were so random. But other than that, it was a really fun game. I'm not sure why, but I enjoyed this one WAY more than Banana Blitz which I never finished.

Banana Blitz is notoriously known as the beginning of the downfall of the series. The first two games are expertly designed around the marble madness gameplay style, and BB just throws that out of the window in favor of a mandatory jump button and out-of-place bosses. It also goes quantity over quality for the party games and fails there.

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Angel's Punishment (Switch)

This is kind of the opposite of what I said about Monster Boy. Angel's Punishment is a worse game in every technical sense (the dialogue is littered with typos, there are issues with hit detection, the sound and music are buggy, etc) but it does nail the Metroidvania feeling. There isn't much story, no NPCs or sidequests, just a big ol' area to explore, collect powers, and kill bosses. You can probably whip through the whole thing in one sitting. I wish it was harder; the few reviews I found described it as fairly challenging, but after the first 15 minutes or so you get a better weapon and upgrade your health and it becomes almost trivially easy. I also wish it was more polished -- idk if this makes sense, but it feels like an SNES game that you loved as a kid but when you go back to it years later it feels like a solid 7/10 at best. Still, I bought it for only a few bucks and enjoyed it a lot considering that.

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No More Heroes III (Switch)
Here it is, the return to form... such as it is, considering the original form. The incredibly janky open world and goofy job minigames return with a vengeance, alongside a story that doesn't even want to be taken seriously and fairly improved combat, albeit without many bosses as memorable as some of those in the previous games. Simply genre-hopping isn't quite enough to wow me anymore, I guess, but it's still a fun, weird time.

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Control (PC)
At the end of every year, every author at Kotaku makes a list of their top games of the year. Every single list had Control in it. This, plus other articles pushing the game, made me wonder if they got paid off to do that, or if it's really such a amazing game.
Seeing the score on Metacritic, looks like maybe it is really such a good game!

But I don't know. I found it to be mediocre.
Maybe it's my fault. People often praise the story, but I found it to be nonsense. About 2 hours in, I stopped reading the files I found around the game. When other games do that, I usually do read them. I also usually find them interesting (Resident Evil games are the best example that comes to mind)
But in Control it feels like those files are everywhere and I didn't understand what the hell I was reading most of the time. But maybe I am just dumb I don't know

The gameplay, which I expected would be great considering it's a unique battle system I don't recall ever playing a game with a similar one (lifting objects while levitating and stuff) somehow turned out to be repetitive and boring.
There was one time which I actually enjoyed some fights, and that was when (mild spoiler, but just in case) there is a metal song played in the background, and while I didn't like the song (or metal in general) I found like it added a lot. So Maybe the actual problem of the battle system is the lack of a battle OST, but I am not sure if it's a valid criticism

The ending (major spoiler) also sucked. They left too much stuff open but I could live with that. But not having a final boss? the game just ended out of nowhere. I just beat a generic level and the credits rolled. What was up with that?

At the end of the day I am not sure I would recommend it. But even if I did, I don't believe it should be praised too much. It's a 6/10 game at best

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Tales of Berseria (PS4)

Finally beat the game after having owned it for five years. All in all, easily my second favorite Tales of game after Symphonia (big nostalgia factor, but also liked the dungeons much more than in Berseria). Gameplay-wise it was both a bit repetitive and convoluted at the same time, but no other Tales of game had a cast and even story I cared as much about overall as Berseria. Amazing cast with no throwaways (having six main characters instead of eight was a great choice in that regard), excellent and interesting side characters, tons of humour but also deeper and more personal interactions...it had everything I wanted in a JRPG story. Maybe the moral grayness becomes a little more black and white towards the end (like they still had to end it in a typical Tales of manner), but it was always there in some amount. And the battles are super fluid and chaotic. Dungeons and enviroments did get a bit repetitive, formulaic and slightly bland, kinda like Xillia, but at least they mixed up a little bit here and there with some area-specific gimmicks. And one final thing is that the text shown in (story) skits in the endgame sidequests is hilariously terrible, they did not check that all. Spoken sentences were written down almost like they used speech recognition, some words and sentences were literally completely different from what was actually being said.

Overall, while not perfect, it's a fantastic JRPG and it has become increasingly more difficult for me to get engrossed in these stories, characters and worlds like in younger years, so kudos to Berseria for engrossing me once more.

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Fall Guys (PS4)

I know you never really beat online games, but I finally just got the platinum trophy for this so as far as I'm concerned, I've beaten it.

I never really play online games on my PlayStation, especially if it requires online play to get the platinum. But last year a friend of mine convinced me to try Fall Guys since it was free and it was a good way to pass the time during the pandemic. Most of the trophies for this were pretty straightforward to get but I never thought I'd get the platinum for it since Infallible is like impossible to get.

But then earlier this year this was a patch that introduced a bug that made Infallible possible to boost with others and I managed to get it before it was hotfixed out. Suddenly, the platinum seemed possible. Took a long time but I finally managed to get the 20 wins for the last trophy.

I'm so sick of team games.

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Kenri posted...

I agree that Riku wasn't a terribly difficult fight, tbh I was surprised that so many people had issues with it. On the other hand Maleficent Dragon just destroyed me over and over.

I think Riku is at this really weird section where he's really difficult as a kid, but as an adult you breeze through him. I always struggled at that fight when I was younger, but when I replayed KHI a couple of years ago I got him first try without too much effort either.

Metro 2033 (PC)
A solid enough game that doesn't really excel at anything but doesn't do anything too badly either.

The plot and the world-building are solid. The setting is interesting and unique while still being recognizable. The plot mostly suffers from pacing issues, as it really only exists at the start and at the end of the game, and in the middle you're mostly just travelling from place to place, meeting some people and fighting enemies. The 'good' ending is probably overshadowed by the fact that the game doesn't really do enough with it; you get one character who hints at the plot concerning the Dark Ones and a general gaming sense that killing them is bad, but the game doesn't really build up to it, highlighted by the confession of the protagonist in the ending that he "didn't know why he spared them".

Gameplay-wise, this game is hit or miss. I don't know how the Redux version does it, but this game gives you very little help on how the systems work. It took me until the end of the game to realize gas mask filters got replaced automatically or how charging guns or the battery worked. There's a bunch of guns available, but you don't really get any info on the difference between any of them. The opening area gives you a firing range to test out your first gun; it would be nice if any of the other hubs had had something like this, especially because ammo = bullets in this game. The stealth was also very unclear in this game, although that might also be because I only figured out at the end that your wrist shows you how hidden you are (but even then, I would consider the stealth subpar at best). Don't ask me how to deal with librarians, because even though I stood still they always aggro'd anyway. There's a lot of systems to make it stealthy, like lanterns and lights you dim or shoot out, glass and doors you need to avoid walking over, but the problem is that once you're spotted essentially all the enemies are on alert, so you can't really make any mistake which feels somewhat punishing, especially in large areas. The early guns also feel really bad and you get very little indication of whether or not you're hitting an enemy. Grenades never felt that useful to me either. The other gameplay, like managing the gas mask, are neat and immersive but not really fun to manage and play.

Graphically, this game looked a lot better than I expected a 2010 game to look. The character models aren't too impressive, but the levels and the monsters are neatly designed. Again, the Metro feels claustrophobic and intense, and the outside areas feel cold and desolate like they should. There are some technical shortcomings though. It is very cool and immersive that you can play this game with Russian voice-actors, however their audio only gets translated in cutscenes, which means that if you are not a native speaker, you cannot understand what they are saying in ambient dialogue, which is a big part of the world-building. There's also some very annoying bugs where you can crouch under something but the game just doesn't let you and you have to struggle with the camera and equipping different weapons or maybe getting hit by an enemy to force yourself through.

All in all, the game was solid enough that I'm interested in playing the other games in the series, but I would expect that the recommendation would be to play the Redux version, as it is probably a version that received the fine-tuning that the original does need.

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RyoCaliente posted...

I think Riku is at this really weird section where he's really difficult as a kid, but as an adult you breeze through him. I always struggled at that fight when I was younger, but when I replayed KHI a couple of years ago I got him first try without too much effort either.

Oh yeah, that would make sense. I only played KH for the first time as an adult so it tracks.

Aggelos (Switch)

Technically I guess this is a Metroidvania, but it doesn't have a map so my hot take is that it doesn't count. It's a lot more like, I dunno, Zelda 2 without the overworld bits. It kinda rocks though. Recommended.

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The Forgotten City (XB1)

Once I got into, I was glued to it in three long sessions. I had a pair of cheap deaths due to how hard they made it to discern things when the golden rule was violated.

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Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King (Switch)

Pretty good LttP-like. Not much unique or original, though the framing device is neat.

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Resogun (Vita)

One of the PS+ shoot em up games given over the years. A solid title and worth a few hours to go through.

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Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories (PS4)
I actually beat this on Tuesday 11/23 but was too lazy and tired to do a write-up then (not to mention I had already done a playthrough topic). I should point out that I played and beat this on the GBA back when it first came out, but I found this version to be significantly different to the point where I can count it separately on my beaten games list. Also in both cases I consider beating both stories as "beating" it.

I mean, obviously not as good as the first one. Heck, maybe not even as good as the GBA version as far as gameplay goes (obviously as an experience the 3D version is better). I had a tough time with this game to the point where it broke me down in a few places, and people in the playthrough topic suggested I just Youtube the cutscenes and skip to KHII (something my OCD just wouldn't allow me to do), but I found pretty good strategies against most bosses eventually. I'd say the two hardest bosses in the game for me were Larxene (both fights) and Zexion (boy was I glad Re:CoM added a fight with him because it was sorely lacking in the original), because those were the two that I simply never figured out a good strategy for and just had to brute force it/get lucky. I honestly didn't mind the card aspect, I just wish it had been a LITTLE less luck-based (some early bosses were hard for me simply because I had terrible luck getting the cards I needed to build the deck I wanted, particularly healing cards) and maybe the battling a little smoother. I did have fun building good decks and owning bosses once I figured out a good deck to use on them.

I was honestly more invested in the story this time around. The framing story had more heart to it (no pun intended), and even world-by-world, I liked how there was a running theme as opposed to just the abbreviated versions of the films that most of the worlds in KH1 had for stories, and a lot of the endings/morals to these stories kinda touched me. Some of the voice acting irked me early on but most of them grew on me. With Axel, that was just not how I expected him to sound so it was jarring at first but I grew to like it (thankfully seeing as he has a big role in KHII). Larxene sounded a little off... like it was fine that she sounded sexy but she sounded too playfully sexy as opposed to evil sexy. Vexen's voice was very silly but Lexaeus and Zexion were perfect; exactly how they always sounded in my head. I was also cautious about Namine's voice since I know this is her voice for most of the series except KHII but I really did enjoy it. I was kinda annoyed that only the framing story was voice acted and the Disney worlds weren't, but I get it. I'm their mindset was, "Yeah, let's go ahead and NOT hire/pay James Woods or Dan Castellaneta to record six lines for a remake of a GBA game," which is fair. I'd say that up to this point, my favorite KH-original characters are Axel, Riku and Namine.

So between already having beaten the GBA game long ago and having done a playthrough topic of this, I'm not feeling it to say much more other than... I will keep going with this series.

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Astalon Episode 2: Tears of the Earth (PC)

No there is no Episode 1. The title is an homage to Star Wars.

This was a surprisingly good game. I don't know what I was expecting going into it. I just knew it was a platformer in the retro style graphics. What this game is is a Metroidvania with souls-like mechanics---you literally gain souls and use them for upgrades when you die but you also have to start over with any shortcuts unlocked being permanent. There's been a few games with this formula before but unlike Rogue Legacy the levels aren't randomly procedurally-generated and unlike Dead Cells, the upgrades actually stick instead of adding to the slot machine of potential goodies. The design clearly intends you slowly build up your strength until you become OP and it is well-deserved.

Cost of the upgrades as well as increasingly costly temporary upgrades don't make it feel like a slog. Combat is solid and punishing even with basic enemies since there's hardly any way to regain life that isn't connected to costing souls you'll often find yourself dying over and over but ever so slowly inching towards mapping out the tower as you memorize enemy behavior and map hazards. Checkpoints and Waypoints are few and far in between despite being permanent---a true oasis which makes the challenge just right for me. Fuck DS-style gameplay that's thinly veiled an attempt at padding the game out. There is one bottleneck however with the first boss from which you'll be starved of souls to upgrade much unless you don't spread it out between your three characters. But when I got that down and I seriously had to think about boss patterns and whatnot because I wasn't OP yet, dying approx 10 times in the process, the rest of the game flowed smoothly.

That's right, count em. Three

It's your classic Warrior, Rogue, Mage setup which is weird for a game set in the year 20XX but yeah. Despite the drip fed story there is very little to tell and whatever is revealed is enough. You're heroes. The Dark Knight has poisoned the village with his tower. Slay him. There's also some soul stuff happening with the mage and the Dark Knight has backstory but I'll let you guys learn all about it. What little conversations the three have is endearing. You can tell these adventurers really are friends who have some pretty big shoes to fill. Lots of homages too as you unlock a Secret of Mana Merchant and a Belmont clone as secret characters if you explore 100% of the map.

And you'll want to, as that nets you the True Ending. It's also honestly very fun to eventually become OP and kick ass. Even with the best unique item you'll still feel challenged and if you don't there's 2 more Castlevania-ish modes of play where you play as someone else. There's even a Ghouls n' Ghosts gargoyle enemy that acts the same annoying way meh. And you get to play as one in another mode!

If I had a complaint it would be the character switching only goes one way which gets annoying when you unlock the secret characters. And the bosses could use some balancing but there's a Boss Rush mode so I'm not complaining for real lol. There's also because of the oldschool "enemies reappear in each new screen" mechanic, it's very easy to farm for souls if you put in like 30 minutes. I got my characters killing in 2-5 strikes as early as the halfway point.

All in all contender for my game of the year. Honestly, there's just been so much of it for this year. I'd rather not put Enderal as that's just cheating. Game automatically wins in my book.

Anyways, Astalon is also on the Switch. I thoroughly recommend it as it was kind of quietly released last July with little to no fanfare.

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I think I forgot to post when I did this.

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (GCN)

Beat the other one I've already beaten before doing my cavalry only run. I didn't get like 3 characters to level 20 in their promoted class due to changing a few characters I was planning to use and thus having some EXP wasted. Next will be a game I already beat this year.

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Ys: The Oath in Felghana (PC)

Second Ys game I've played through. Origin was my first, and I really adore that one. This one... I did not so much adore.

Played on Hard, so I was obviously expecting a bit of a challenge, but it really seemed like a lot of the difficulty came in cheap ways, especially with any of the non-humanoid bosses. Some of them were just unimaginative and tedious, others had such varied and RNG-dependent patterns that every once in a while an attempt would feel completely unwinnable if I got unlucky.

Narrative was pretty rough, too. I know that's not really the Ys focus, but Origin at least had some likable characters and genuinely surprising moments. Oath's main cast was either dull or actively bad, and you can see every plot development coming from a mile away.

I'd still call this a good game - it looks pretty, the music is as pleasant as one would expect from a Falcom game, and any combat that doesn't involve a frustrating boss is fun ARPG fare. But I didn't like it as much as I expected.

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Yakuza 3 Remastered (PC)

It was all right. Definitely the weakest Yakuza I've played in almost every regard.

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Mundaun (PC)

Very nice aesthetic horror game with a twist on curses and how to deal with them. In a stunning move never before done in any indie horror game, in order to get the best ending you have to just let things lie. Don't go back in time and break the pact. Don't let your tormentor die. Sometimes, things happen for a reason and by allowing them no matter how shitty, you allow yourself to not be swayed into giving people what they want.

Very few jumpscares but don't really love the stealth. Fortunately, there is a difficulty setting. The open-world nature of the game reminds me of Kona which I'll have to beat someday but that game was more Painscreek Mystery Solving with Survival Mechanics. This one is more I Wont Tell You What You're Looking For Haha Enjoy Exploring and Backtracking. It's not necessary but strewn throughout the game are items that permanently increase your stats and you will need them for the night phases which require sloooooowly crawling around sentient hay bales and killer beekeepers. There's even a weapon that requires going all the way back to the first house to unlock a door you may have forgotten ages ago and I can't imagine going through the first time on Normal or Hard without this gun. Probably my hatest collectible is the Coffee which requires about 4-5 "ingredients" collected in various places, then you have to backtrack to an oven to heat it up and drink it for permanent HP raise. And you will need it!

Theoretically speaking, I'd just play this with a guide for the collectibles, if all you wanna do is story stuff. In this case, I don't mind it as much because the exploration part is very fun as well.

That said, I didn't mind because the environment, the characters, and the plot was pretty interesting and fresh. It wasn't just any Old World "you dont understand our ways" villager horror. It was something more realistic that really challenged the way I thought about things honestly.

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Hexcells & Hexcells Plus & Hexcells Infinite (PC)

I'm posting these all at once because they feel rather like parts of a whole to me, even though each new game's mechanics restart from the beginning. Anyways, the entire trilogy essentially takes Minesweeper on a hex grid as its base and proceeds to crib significant elements from Picross, which should have been right up my alley. The key word there is 'should', and to be fair, I've never treated Minesweeper as much more than an occasional, albeit fun diversion.

Alas, I'm not inclined to return to any of the games' campaign levels anytime soon, if ever. I think their audiovisual and level design was just too abstract for me to latch onto, at least to a point. The tedium of clearing every level sans mistakes didn't help matters, by the end of which I (albeit as a poor puzzle-solver) was second-guessing my every move lest I learn I had overlooked something. Doing so was admittedly unnecessary, but I found I might as well have because even guessing safely - or more often, from memory - tended to break any challenge present in even the most complex levels. I did appreciate how the chimes associated with marking hexes felt adaptive to my actions (seemingly becoming louder the bolder/more impactful a given action was on my part), however.

Infinite's puzzle generator is a whole other matter, but not because it meaningfully impacts my merely mildly favorable overall opinion on the trilogy. The resulting (easy) levels have all felt samey, being full-size checkerboards nominally deploying all of Infinite's mechanics that give themselves up without even having to guess. It's impressive to a point, but it feels more like a novelty than something with lasting value for someone like me, liable as I am to get frustrated at myself over my failures. I am nonetheless compelled to push on with puzzle generator levels until I've cleared 60 for Infinite's final achievement. Though I'm not usually a completionist, that's solely because games tend to have achievements that I need outside help to get and/or achievements well beyond my existing skill level.

In sum, these are three solid (and cheap) games for logic puzzle fans, and I probably would have liked them more if I weren't, well, me. (A case in point is that it's been so long since I've beaten or even seriously played a game.)

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Pokemon Brilliant Diamond (Switch)

There is honestly not much to say that hasn't already been said. They are simple remakes/remasters/reskins and it feels like the developers didn't know how to make them stand out or how to balance them correctly. Most of the game is a complete breeze, then the Elite 4 and Cynthia got buffed a whole lot compared to the originals and are a big challenge. They are clearly a little more balanced around you having 6 pokemon and being a higher than normal level, yet that makes the rest of the game so easy it becomes a chore. Forced exp share is just not fun, it works okay in SwSh because that game is far more about catching pokemon and doing "Dynamax boss battles" in the open wilds than the main story, while in a game with this classic structure, it makes the Pokemon in your team just kind of exist without the need to have them put effort in. Oh, and being able to just straight up buy some of the strongest TM's in as high a quantity as you want for very little money before the third gym is just overkill and makes finding the TM's in the overworld after exploration incredibly unsatisfying. Bad decision there, they could have postponed offering those TM's until later.

Unfortunately, they kept all the things from the original games that were not that great, such as the very lame story, the terrible pokemon variety and locking interesting evolutions to postgame, the overabundance of lame trainers with weak first stage pokemon...the HM's were changed to being useable outside your team, which is far less tedious, so that's cool (and I like how they made Bidoof/Bibarel do everything aside from the HM's that require wings to pull off), and the Grand Underground is fun in giving you cool items to find and some unique Pokemon through the hideouts, although the level difference affecting catch rates became annoying quick (the way to counter that was to overlevel, making the game too easy).

All in all, a nice nostalgic trip that is way too safe in the wrong areas, while it changes some things in the wrong areas as well. I started really having fun at the League, where my Pokemon being below there levels provided a solid challenge and required me to play smart here and there (on Set mode, by the way), especially against Cynthia. But before that, it was going through the motions too much. It did remind me how cool the Sinnoh gyms were though. They had some genuinely fun puzzles in them.

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Metroid Dread (Switch)

Amazing Metroid game, definitely worth the wait. Everything I thought was going to be weaker initially turned out great in the end. Plenty to explore, great puzzles for upgrades and not as linear as I thought, especially after you get a good amount of upgrades. And there are a ton of upgrades that are all great fun. I just loved Flash Shifting my way through rooms. Bosses are tough, but it's not overly punishing if you lose and I feel like you learn with every attempt, which is great (although I'd argue there could be a little bit more room to learn the attacks in the first attempt, but that's super minor). Especially the final boss was surprisingly tough for a modern Nintendo game, which was a nice surprise. Also, it's relatively lengthy for a 2D Metroid game I thought. The only real weakness I thought was the music, I can't remember anything, nor even a specific atmosphere that the music set. Also, some transition/load times could have been slightly faster maybe. I'll take these small gripes though. Smooth, slick, has the qualities of a good Metroid title and it's just a blast to play. It's at least in my top 4 Metroid games (3D included).

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Paradise Killer (PC)

Got this for christmas last year from Mr. Crispy.

It was a pretty neat detective game, though not huge into visual novel style games.

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Unpacking (XB1)

It could get overwhelming at times, and some objects were hard to discern, but for the most part, I was in the groove

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I've been meaning to get around to Katana Zero/Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom one of these days.
Kenri posted...

Angel's Punishment (Switch)

This is kind of the opposite of what I said about Monster Boy. Angel's Punishment is a worse game in every technical sense (the dialogue is littered with typos, there are issues with hit detection, the sound and music are buggy, etc) but it does nail the Metroidvania feeling. There isn't much story, no NPCs or sidequests, just a big ol' area to explore, collect powers, and kill bosses. You can probably whip through the whole thing in one sitting. I wish it was harder; the few reviews I found described it as fairly challenging, but after the first 15 minutes or so you get a better weapon and upgrade your health and it becomes almost trivially easy. I also wish it was more polished -- idk if this makes sense, but it feels like an SNES game that you loved as a kid but when you go back to it years later it feels like a solid 7/10 at best. Still, I bought it for only a few bucks and enjoyed it a lot considering that.

Ah jeeze. That doesn't sound too good. I got this game for $1.99 last month when the tagline in the eShop description hooked me with "A respectable and very good "metroidvania" game with classic pixel art."

Double Dragon Neon (PC)

Replayed but this time around it was via online co-op with a friend.
The netcode was sorta decent. For some reason when fighting certain boss fights, the textures are bugged and the bosses are invisible on one player's end (mine) but the host (my friend) was able to see the boss. Even some projectiles were not showing. It was weird.

Also...I was Jimmy and beat my friend. I got Marian. lol...

Katana Soul (PC)

"Play as the samurai Kan and fight in a dark, demon-infested Japan. Face this 100% arcade experience without any credits or saves: you can only rely on your skills with the katana."

The game was advertised well in it's description. According to the developer on a Steam forum post, this game was inspired by Kenseiden (I had played that briefly a year or two ago but couldn't really get into it.)

I really enjoyed it. It has an aesthetic that looks like a Commodore 64 and a good soundtrack that sounds like it's from a Commodore 64 as well. It controls really well, too.
I liked this game so much I even managed to get all the Steam Achievements.


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GOGZero posted...

Ah jeeze. That doesn't sound too good. I got this game for $1.99 last month when the tagline in the eShop description hooked me with "A respectable and very good "metroidvania" game with classic pixel art."

I think I got it at $2 too and I'd definitely recommend it at that price for a metroidvania fan! It's not bad, just kinda amateurish.

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Dark Lord and the Maiden of Light (PC)
This is a Fire Emblem romhack and... Look, people are gonna think I'm nuts, but it's better than some actual official FE games. Not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination - it goes on a little too long and there's some true garbage in the map design of the endgame chapters, but again, those aren't exactly things you'd have to hunt very hard to find elsewhere in the series.

Outside of those complaints, nothing in here really feels amateurish; there's an obvious level of care and polish that you don't often get in projects like this. You could drop 90% of the cast into an official FE game and no one would be able to tell they came from a romhacker. The plot plays with the established formula a bit and drops in some legitimately surprising twists and memorable moments. The map design outside of those last few chapters is creative and challenging but fair, and hell, my main army core got fairly RNG-screwed so even those endgame bits might've ended up being worse than they should have.

All in all, I play a decent amount of romhacks and probably like them a bit more than the average person, and this is one of the better ones of any game I've ever encountered. If any FE fans have an itch for the series but don't feel like replaying the official games, I'd definitely recommend this.

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