toxicitizen

It's a sequel set in the same world but thousands of years (I wanna say 10,000?) in the future. I don't know how far in you are or when it's mentioned exactly but the basic premise is that humans are hiding out on the moon because of the alien invasion. Any questions you might have beyond that will be addressed in the game. The connection between OG Nier and Automata are fairly minimal as far as the main plot goes. You'll get more out of it if you're familiar with it but you can still play and enjoy Automata just fine without. Personally, I recommend watching a story recap on youtube. You'll learn everything you need to know with a minimal time investment. And, more importantly, you won't have to play the original Nier which is honestly not a good game. Youtuber Clemps did a pretty thorough and informative one, if you can tolerate cringy humor.

Falcom games tend to have great music in general and the Trails series is no exception, but goddamn the version of Overdosing Heavenly Bliss from the Trails in the Sky Zanmai album is so fucking good!

I scotch taped mine and just grabbed the first Dark Tower book and read for a while. That's one of the really annoying/stupid ones because you only get him at the very end of the game and you don't even have that many opportunities to ride him. And I think it has to be done in a single playthrough, because at one point I started a new game to grind kills for another achievement and I'm pretty sure that caused the counters for that one and the Ruin one to reset.

Yeah, I remember it being a bitch on console and it was honestly even worse with the Steam controller because I suck at using the trackpad for stuff that requires precision. But then I had the brilliant idea to try using the mouse instead and got it on my first try. It makes it so much easier lol.

Darksiders Warmastered Edition. Man, I love this game. It has aged a tiny bit and at this point this was (at least) my third playthrough, so the first half of the game was a bit dull. But overall it's still a solid Zelda clone with a pretty cool comic book art syle. Also, feels good to have finally completed it. It's not particularly challenging but it has a few mind-numbingly time consuming achievements. This is one of those games that I was on track to platinum back on PS3 but ended up putting off and never going back to finish. Then I played the original PC release but the achievements were super fucking buggy where even some non-missable story ones didn't unlock. So, yeah, this was long overdue. Not gonna jump into Darksiders II right away but I am looking forward to replaying it even more. I only played it the one time at launch, so I don't remember it as clearly as I did the first one.

Yeah, I got fucked over a few times by Kloe's S-Craft and the reviving thing. Also, about the nightmare arena, As for preparing/going into the final dungeon, here's a few tips.

Made a few bundle purchases this month since some stuff I've wanted for a while finally showed up in them. Not gonna list everything I got but here's the stuff I was mainly after. Stellaris being the early unlock for the next Humble Monthly. I couldn't resist despite the fact that I have an actual backlog of 4X games at this point.

I ended up having to abuse retry offset for that fight. Twice. It's that fucking brutal. There inevitably comes a point in the fight where if you're not able to finish him off very quickly it's essentially over. He just fucking wipes your party like it's nothing. It feels appropriate given who you're fighting but it's legitimately unfair lol. But yeah, that plane has some pretty good character moments. And the way Silver Will starts playing just as he tells Richard "Defeat me." So good!

So, this is old news but apparently Bungie's contract with Activision has this clause in it: which seems oddly specific to me. Like, why those three companies in particular? I guess Gearbox do work with random publishers sometimes but Epic hasn't done a whole lot other than UE development in recent years and Valve barely even makes games anymore. To me it kinda sounds like someone at Bungie has a beef with those specific companies, for some reason. Obviously I'm just speculating but that would be one hilariously stupid explanation for no Steam release. That could also explain why the original installment in their FPSMMO series mysteriously skipped PC, now that I think about it...

What? Why would they do that? All their games run through it. Maybe you're thinking of them phasing out the name "Battle.net"? The launcher was renamed to Blizzard App, which seems silly now given that everyone still calls it Battle.net and apparently it's not only for Blizzard games anymore lol.

Second season officially announced. No details yet, so we don't know if the plan is still to have a completely new story with a new cast of characters. I hope it is because I loved the original but I don't feel like there's a lot of potential for more interesting stories there nor do I particularly feel the need to revisit those characters all that much.

Yeah, that's a surprising move. I mean, not entirely but if it was something they wanted to do you'd think they would've done it with Call of Duty by now but nope. I have no issue with the Blizzard launcher but I'm not particularly interested in Destiny either, so all this really does for me is make me less likely to impulse buy it during a sale lol.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd. Well, that was kind of a weird way to end that trilogy. New structure, new protagonists and a mostly self-contained and personal story that's only tangentially related to the events of the first two games. Really, this game is more like a dungeon crawler built mainly to act as a delivery mechanism for a bunch of mostly unrelated short stories that focus on either backstory, world building or character development. I've seen the 3rd described as being less of a sequel and more of a "bridge" towards the rest of the series and I can definitely see why. Not complaining, though, because more Trails in the Sky is always welcome! I've seen more than a few people call it their favorite Trails game overall and I can't say I feel the same way but I'm really glad I got to visit Liberl and hang out with these characters one last time. I'm also more curious than ever about the games we still don't have in english. Some of these optional stories were pretty damn intriguing. One in particular was basically all build-up and foreshadowing for Trails of Cold Steel, which is crazy considering it predates the game by like 6 years! Makes you wonder what else was in there that I didn't or couldn't pick up on. I wouldn't rank any of the Trails games as all-time favorites individually, but with each new one I play I increasingly feel like the series as a whole is my favorite video game series right now. I really can't think of any other that compares to the way the overall thing is structured and evolves throughout the different sub-series. The only thing that comes to mind as being even a little similar is A Song of Ice and Fire with the way you have all these separate plot threads taking place all over the world with some characters occasionally crossing over between them. I really hope XSEED will confirm that they're doing the Crossbell games in the near future because I need more! There was something like 6 months between the release of SC and the announcement for 3rd, so hopefully we'll hear something by the end of the year. Maybe...

Randomly found out that Stone Sour have both a new single out and a new album coming out next month! Their albums tend to be hit and miss, though, so I'm cautiously optimistic. Hopefully it's not too much of a departure from House of Gold & Bones because I thought it was the best one since their debut.

Yeah, the last round is straight up bullshit. Felt like I totally lucked out when I got it. I had a good run and he had a bad one, that's all there was to it. Only tip I can give is to pay attention to which kind of fish can be used as bait for bigger ones and try to focus on catching as many of those as possible.

I'm just about ready to head out to the final dungeon, I think I'm almost done wrapping everything else up. I really love how, unlike FC and SC, there's barely any truly missable stuff. You can backtrack to almost every single chest in the entire game and the achievement for the chest messages doesn't require all of them this time around. The only thing you could potentially miss out on is the books in the garden and that's easily fixed if you keep backup saves for every single chapter. The only achievements I'm going to be missing are the ones that require at least another playthrough anyway. I am not looking forward to my first Nightmare difficulty Trails run... Also, star door 14 has some pretty juicy overall lore stuff. Make sure you do all of them, Mal! And goddamn, star door 15 is some seriously dark shit. O_o

I'm a huge fan of puzzle games and I remember raging at some levels pretty hard, so it's definitely not just you. The game strikes a pretty good balance between being challenging enough to require you to think carefully about your moves and rushing you by constantly trying to crawl up your ass with some kind of threat but it can make for some pretty frustrating levels.

Hahahaha, nope. Now I really want to tell you just to scare the shit out of you. I'll just leave it in a spoiler tag and let you agonize over whether to click or not. All I'll say is this. The boss' identity might seem like a big spoiler but it really isn't. That person's presence in Phantasma isn't really a big deal considering the context and when you reach a certain area in a certain chapter, it becomes really obvious that you'll be running into them.

Noticed it was actually discounted for Humble's current sale, so I jumped on it. I feel like there's been an increasing trend of DLC and season passes not being discounted (or barely) along with their base game lately, so I didn't want to miss the chance to grab it cheap. Don't think I'll play them any time soon, though. I'm not quite ready to do a fresh playthrough of the game and I've learned the hard way in DSII that jumping into Souls DLC on NG++ and beyond is just asking for a bad time.

Yeah, it's a completely different beast. I had heard that it was the hardest of all the games but I wasn't quite prepared for how brutal it could get. The boss fight I stopped on last night was just... well, if I told you who it's against you would probably understand right away but let's just say I got utterly destroyed. Not even sure how to prepare for it today, honestly. Personally, I'm not crazy about the new structure and main plot but the doors more than make up for it. I was kinda shocked by how insanely long the first sun door I did was. And I really love how there's a star door that's basically nothing but exposition and foreshadowing for Cold Steel. You wouldn't know it if you're playing the games in order, though. So, I'm really glad to have at least played Cold Steel 1 and it makes me wonder if I'm missing any obvious Zero/Ao tie-ins.

Mass Effect isn't particularly surprising given the state and reception of Andromeda and I can't say I'm particularly heartbroken to see the IP die off. But the IO thing is some fucking bullshit. Hitman 2016 was not only the best Hitman game in years (possibly ever), it was also one of the best games last year. I shouldn't be surprised to see S-E do idiotic shit at this point but it's frustrating as hell to see them punish IO (or any of their western studios) while their own in-house teams make shit that is painfully mediocre on a fairly consistent basis. You'd never see them cut the budget of the next mainline Final Fantasy yet that series hasn't had a truly amazing game in over a decade. Just... ugh!

Yes! Okay, now do Skies of Arcadia next! And Resonance of Fate! And... and Jet Set Radio Future, I guess? Just keep 'em coming!

Yeah, Falcom have this annoying habit of not giving their partners access to their games until after the Japanese launch. So, at the very least a year later for the english release. Then there's the possibility that it might be another massive script like SC, which would likely push it even further. That's just me speculating on script length but it has been 3 whole years since Cold Steel 2's Japanese launch. That's a hell of a gap compared to the single year between CS1 and 2. On the bright side, that leaves us with plenty of time to wait for the PC ports and play them. It's also pretty much the first Trails game to be guaranteed an english release, so it's nice to not have to worry about that for once. Gonna have to ignore all news relating to it for a while, though. I've already had something from Cold Steel 2 spoiled for me and I'd like to avoid any further spoilers...

The art style is also arguably the only truly unique element the series has. I absolutely loved 1 and 2 but they're some of the most derivative games I've ever played. D1 was pretty much just a Zelda clone but D2 felt like they took random modules from various games and just threw them all together. I liked the end result but it ended up feeling kinda weird. I guess in a good way because now that I'm thinking about it I'm really looking forward to replaying it in the near future.