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

(+) Yeah! (+)

MIND0 (Vita)

One of the very now rare Vita exclusive games, this dungeon crawler has a story that sounds like it was ripped out of someone's Persona fanfiction, and the dub matched it by bringing in some of the dub VAs from that game as well. The game play though is pretty good - but only on expert difficulty where it makes a lot of the battles throughout the game - all of them, even random ones - a lot more interesting as you go through the game. I still have the 50 floor bonus dungeon to go through but I should have fun with that one as well.

Shady Part of Me (PS4)

In this indie puzzle platformer, you control two girls - one a shadow, that runs in the background, and another normal, who cannot be exposed to light. The puzzles revolve around these two concepts, and there are collectibles in the form of origami cranes scattered throughout the levels. The story is simple, but well thought out and the voice acting does a good job of supporting the game. Took me four hours to play through all four acts.

UnMetal (XB1)

Cool Metal Gear-inspired game that while it has its own share of faults, the QoL improvements from NES-era games of this kind more than make up for it.

Next:
Fire Emblem Awakening (3DS)

What I had been playing for most of the year before I had a problem I had to wait a little bit for. I could have beaten it months ago but I stalled out wanting to break a bunch of my hoarded weapons and then finally gave up doing that. Granted, I levelled up enough that I had the disappointing one-rounded Grima so... kinda made the ending of the game underwhelming. Plus many other problems I've addressed to other people that puts this game in my bottom half of FE games.

I beat 10 games this year so far...
I could not tell you the last time I actually fully beat 10 games in a year...lol
Sure most are all short games and some may have been started the year prior....but darn it I did it! lol
I usually just play a game halfway through and stop.

Anywho

Rockman: Battle & Chase

One of the games from my collection of Mega Man JP PS1 games. This was a fun spin on Mario Kart. Simple but effective. The Wily Level was a huge spike in difficulty (This game was super easy until then so in a way it was welcomed....even if it was really cheap haha). The game is setup to play through multiple times, but I got an ending screen that had awesome music so I am counting it lol.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Damn good game. Shame it took me so long to finally finish it.

Kenri posted...

Mega Man 10 (replay, via Mega Man Legacy Collection 2, Steam)

THIS game on the other hand. Holy shit, wasn't this supposed to be easy compared to MM9? This game fucking destroyed me, especially the Wily stages. Admittedly, I was using Proto Man, and I strongly regret that decision because I'm just not good enough at this series to deal with dying in 3 hits without it being a miserable experience, but even the platforming was insanely tough. No wonder I had to grind bolts and buy 9 of every healing item to beat Wily's Fortress when I first played this as a kid.

I suspect I'd have had more fun as Bass than Proto Man but I think he wasn't available to begin with? I dunno. Anyway, I generally like this game but those Wily stages are just brutal so I'm ending this 10 game marathon on kind of a sour note, unfortunately.

Well...playing as Proto Man comes at a price.
You get to charge your Buster.
You get the Slide.
You get to use his Proto Shield when you jump to deflect some projectiles.
The tradeoff: Proto Man takes double the damage compared to Mega Man and he can only shoot 2 regular shots instead of 3 like Mega Man. Although if you use Proto Coil, it will allow Proto Man to shoot out 3 regular shots when you have the Coil out.

Bass was originally a DLC character for $2.00 for those that owned Mega Man 10 on Wii/PS3/360 in their respective shops (not soo much for Wii anymore since the Wii Shop closed down).
Bass is unlocked when you beat the game. You can also use a push button code instead to unlock him in Legacy Collection 2.

Also, yes. Bass is super fun to play as.

999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (PS5 - The Nonary Games edition)

Played this through mostly with my partner watching. I had already played it and gotten one ending on the DS version years ago, but there was still soooo much to uncover. We really got into this, I love these kinds of visual novel-style games. I also got completely absorbed in Danganronpa 1 (and 2 as well to a sliiiightly lesser extent, haven't played 3 yet).

However, 999 is much darker and the characters are a lot more realistic. Just amazing. The escape rooms were generally pretty easy and kind of guide you along and there is a lot of script here, but the structure of how the mystery unfolds is just great.

Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom (XS/X)

What a weird mess this game was. It has a ton of ideas/features, but seldom do they elevate above bad/okay, and they just don't often mesh well with one another.

Octopath Traveler II (Switch) - I've been playing this for 3 months and put 90 hours into it, but now I've truly beaten it. Well, aside from the super boss, but I don't care about that.

Tough game to evaluate for me. It was very chill to play, lots of freedom and it improved on the first game in basically every way. However, those improvements do feel like edits to me moreso than grand changes that might have made it completely transform into something truly amazing. It is very good, very solid, lots of content. The latent powers end up being pretty important by the end, so that gameplay change made a bigger impact than they initially seemed to. The game also at least tries to play around with its structure a bit, even if it's not always that significant or deep. The stories and characters are more interesting, but the problem is that for me the increase in scope and epicness doesn't really translate well to the short story format. The game also felt easy, which can be prevented, but still. The final battle was really cool though.

A game that I liked a lot for what it is and I respect that the developers tried their best to combine their own vision with the criticisms of the first game, even if it's fairly minimalistic in its impact. I don't think it's a vastly different experience compared to OT1, but the small improvements and little things they put in do add up.

Ranking the retro boomer shooters I've played so far:

Hedon
DUSK
Ion Fury
Hands of Necromancy
Cultic - is only this low because they decided to release it as "Episode 1"
Cruelty Squad
Dread Templar | HROT
Project Warlock
Amid Evil - This is my "Its okay, Average" Rating
Powerslave Exhumed
Postal: Brain Damaged
Prodeus | Forgive Me Father

Noting that they are all good. But if I had to rank them it would be this.

Ive only so far given up on one and that's Nightmare Reaper as I couldn't handle the roguelike elements and the desire to push on with the plot through repetition.

I have played a lot of those and Prodeus is my favorite maybe lol. Well, maybe I'm wrong that your list goes in descending order of greatness.

Prodeus is great. My gripe about it is the design choice to make it more arcadey and the obvious glaring issue where if you die you just restart somewhere and you have to run all the way back. And the game's levels can often go into 20 minutes+ and expects you not to die in one sitting is ridiculous.

I don't know if they changed it, but it seems they didn't. I feel like they went with this with community-generated mapping in mind that will keep the game alive.

I'm not finished with it, but I do agree that some levels do feel overly long. The 15-ish minute levels that covered the first 5+ levels seemed perfect in that regard. I can't really speak too much about the death thing. I have died twice and right around where I had last hit a nexus point or whatever they're called. All progress seemed to stay after dying, so if I died in a big arena fight, I wouldn't have to do it all over again, which I of course appreciate. I still have a couple of levels to go, but I'm playing on the default difficulty or whatever the middle is if there wasn't one if that matters.

Half-Life 2

Did a playthrough to get all the achievements (damn you Lambda Locator). I still love it, but man, I forgot how much I dislike Anticitizen One and Follow Freeman. It's just one chaotic mess of huge firefights with useless friendly AI and hiding and throwing rockets at Striders and gunships. None of the tight linearity that is HL's strength imho.

Ocean's Heart (Steam)

Imagine a Zelda game that's basically Minish Cap in the setting of Wind Waker and you'll get Ocean's Heart, which means I loved it. There's not much in the way of large dungeons or innovative items but the game makes up for it with a superbly designed world, where exploration is extra fun, satisfying, and rewarding. It feels like every time you go down one path it leads to two more, and there are tons of secrets to find.

If I had one major complaint it's that the game is extremely easy, even compared to other Zelda games. It's a little better balanced at the start, but once you're exploring and finding health upgrades all the challenge disappears. There's an optional area you can visit to curse yourself so enemies deal extra damage, and I did this, and it was still easy but at least there was a threat of dying again. But if you don't really demand a challenge this is a fun, feel good 2D Zelda-like.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus
I'm not sure if this counts as formally beating the game, but I beat the final big trainer, and then got a message to capture all of the pokemon for the final boss, and just said no. Decent game, but not great.

Harmony's Odyssey (Steam)

This is basically just a jigsaw puzzle game, except the jigsaws you're solving are adorable little 3D dioramas (and there are a few other puzzle types mixed in). Honestly it's pretty juvenile, BUT the story is very cute. It involves Harmony's little chaos gremlin of a cat causing problems across the globe. It's also extremely funny that this saccharine kids game is scathingly critical of the TSA.

Mega Man Battle Network (Legacy Collection -Switch)

First real foray into this series, although I have played this first title a little bit before on an emulator. All in all, it was okay. It did have charm and a surprisingly nice story and universe. Core gameplay concept is unique and really suits the Mega Man universe in terms of making it an RPG. It looked and sounded okay too, if a bit repetitive.

But this is otherwise pretty barebones and it has some really tedious design elements. Most random encounters (which trigger constantly and cannot easily be escaped from if you don't draw Escape cards) are easy with an occasional bad luck combo where you have no safe spots to go to on your grid. Some bosses are very easy and others are frustrating, especially as those hard ones tend to come right after another boss. Drop system is very annoying. I like that there are good things to get from exploring the environments, but the environments themselves are very tedious to navigate, especially with you being taken out of it every few steps. The dungeon puzzles I thought were actually fun in concept, but are again made worse by the dungeon structure and encounters. The Power Plant was horrendous of course. Oh, and there were a loooot of spelling/grammatical errors. Not that big of a problem, but it does come across as cheap.

Still, I did know that this game would be rough as I've been reading that everywhere and that most other games in the series are far better. So I am still interested in MMBN2 and seeing how that improves things.

Prodeus (XS/X)

A lot of recent FPSs meant to emulate those from the 90s have done an excellent job at enhancing the feel and sound of shooting and other QoL improvements vital to the genre. Prodeus is up there among the best. The campaign is a little uneven though with its extended length (it felt much longer than the 9 hours I put it, and I feel like 4-5 is a good range for this style of game) and inconsistent levels.