toxicitizen

Darksiders III leaked by Amazon ahead of announcement! Seems it's coming to PS4/X1/PC and developped by Gunfire Games, which was apparently founded by an ex-Vigil Games founder and employs a lot of ex-Vigil staff. I gotta say, this is pretty much a dream scenario. Good on Nordic for going with the original developers. At first I was disappointed that it was seemingly not following-up with the trend of having you play as a horsemen but apparently I should've looked up Darksiders lore and not just "Horsemen of the Apocalypse" on wikipedia because she totally is one! Time to play those remasters! Btw, I didn't start a new thread because this one got like no replies. So maybe just remove the "II" from the title and turn it into a general Darksiders thread? edit: Turns out I could edit it myself!

Kamiya > Yoko Taro.

Have you already finished Persona 5? You're gonna get burned out on school life JRPGs, man. I can't even imagine playing those two massive games concurrently or even back to back.

Well, you clearly have terrible tastes, so probably not? But yeah, Ys is much more gameplay focused with little to no story (although that's been changing in recent entries). It's all about fast-paced action-RPG gameplay and sweet music. The only advice I can give you here is grab either Ys: Oath in Felghana or Ys Origin on Steam when they're on sale and give them a shot. They both generally get large discounts during sales and are considered some of the best in the series. Felghana is only about ~10h long, has a fairly minimal story and solid gameplay. Origin has the same gameplay but is structured more like a dungeon crawler (the entire game takes place in one large tower that you're exploring floor by floor). Otherwise, watch some gameplay on youtube and see if it looks like something you'd enjoy? One thing worth noting is that the upcoming Ys VIII is apparently the most story-heavy Ys game ever. People that have played the Japanese version jokingly refer to it as Trails of Ys, which is saying something. Also, I just wanna point out that while Trails often starts out with characters that are based on obvious tropes and clichés (most egregious in Cold Steel), any fan of the series will tell you that they virtually always subvert them completely. The series has its reputation for stellar world-building and character development for a very good reason. While everything else you had issues with is entirely subjective, that particular complaint is way off the mark. Which, to be fair, you've essentially only played 1/3 of a game. SC isn't actually a sequel, it's the rest of the game you've started.

Done.

None of their games generate enough discussion here to justify dedicated threads but might as well have one covering all things Falcom. If only so Mal and I can stop derailing other threads. Also, I guess threads don't have subtitles anymore, uh? That's a shame, for once I had one I kinda wanted to use. Anyway, currently confirmed upcoming releases: Trails of Cold Steel II. PC. February 14th. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana. Indefinitely delayed on PC because NISA sucks Out now:

3rd is basically guaranteed to sell like absolute shit and XSEED are fully aware of this, so I think Cold Steel's performance on PC is going to be the big indicator for how likely Zero and Ao are to come. They seemed happy with sales on Vita and PS3, so there's definitely some potential for success there. My stance is a cautiously optimistic one. Falcom generally don't give their partners access to anything until it's released in Japan, so Zero and Ao would be good b-projects to work on while they wait to get their hands on Cold Steel III. It doesn't seem particularly crazy given their output of the last couple years. I mean, I still can't get over the fact that the situation went from "We're geting SC and that'll probably be it for the series" to "Oh yeah, here's Trails of Cold Steel and also the 3rd!" within the span of like a year and a half. It's a faster rate of release for the series than even Falcom ever had in Japan. Oh and I don't recall any specific mentions of Crossbell in SC off the top of my head but let me warn you now. Playing Cold Steel makes it downright painful to not have the Crossbell games. There's some timeline overlap between the two games, so major events get mentioned all the damn time in the most intriguing way. You'll hear about some big thing and instantly wonder "Wait, is that something that I would've played in Zero/Ao???" I think I took a screenshot that perfectly encapsulated how I felt the entire time. Yeah, just gotta get it off my Vita. (spoilered just in case because of the presence of a character that joins the party mid-game but it's nothing I'd consider an actual spoiler)

Hadn't thought of that but that's an interesting question. The game really goes overboard with unique, character-specific dialogue to account for basically any party configuration in any given story cutscene, whereas most JRPGs would just have your party members remain silent. It's part of the reason why the script is so ridiculously massive. I wouldn't be surprised if there was something in there to account for that possibility. And yeah, one of my favorite parts of Cold Steel was all the world building in relation to "the events in Liberl" and the impact they had. I think it's the first time I play a series with storytelling on such a scale. Basically none of the characters from the Sky trilogy are present but it's totally a continuation of the same story. It's a tale bigger than any of their individual stories or lives and it is so fucking good. I vaguely remember hearing some figure about how many games were planned (I want to say 10?) but I'm really not sure. Plans always change and all I know for sure is that there's another subseries after the Erebonia arc wraps up. Most people are guessing Calvard. Yeah, I know what you mean. I kinda hope the ports for Cold Steel I and II won't release too close to each other. I plan on replaying Cold Steel on PC but I sure as hell am not going to marathon it like last time. Given what I know of its pacing issues, I want to take my time with it. Maybe do a chapter a week or something. Probably use a guide to get a perfect save to transfer into Cold Steel II, as well. Also, I've been listening to the Sky soundtrack non-stop since yesterday and AAAAAA! Hype levels rising! Is it May 3rd yet?!

Well, this is weird but I'm intrigued. At the very least, it doesn't look like complete dogshit. It's directed by Takashi Miike, so his Ace Attorney adaptation should be a decent way to gauge whether or not this is worth getting excited for. Haven't seen it yet but I'm pretty sure I've had it sitting on my hard drive for a little while. Should watch it soon.

Hahaha, well the game is way too good for me to stop playing, so I'll definitely be trying to improve my times. But the speed, control and precision on display in the replays at the top of the leaderboards is on a level I can't even imagine. Mine look goddamn sloppy by comparison, even on the easiest levels.

The game is actually super fun, so not really. It came back to me pretty quickly, so despite the long break I already had the skills to clear like half the level. It was just a few specific sections that I had to focus on. Mainly that zig-zag drop near the end and those three pillars you need to dash between at the very end. I still haven't mastered those, that was legit the first time I ever managed to clear them on my first try. I'd normally get stuck there for a few minutes. You'll notice there's a moment of hesitation at the very end. That was purely out of disbelief that I had made it that far without fucking up lol. I was making good progress but I honestly expected to spend at least another day or two on it before I could pull it off.

Holy shit! I DID IT! I fucking did it! When I first SS'd every single one of the regular levels like two years ago, I tried the one secret level also required for the single achievement the game has and pretty much gave up immediately. It just felt straight up impossible. I couldn't even beat it with checkpoints on. Well, I randomly felt like firing up the game a couple days ago and, after a lot of practice, this happened today

Out There Somewhere. This is one of those games I grabbed for like 50 cents during a Steam sale and forgot about. Fired it up on a whim last night and ended up beating it in one sitting. Basically, it starts out as a side-scrolling space shooter but then you get to the boss and he kicks your ass, causing you to crash land on a nearby planet. So, now you have to run around the place, collecting pieces to repair your ship and get back up there. It reminded me of VVVVVV a lot because of how you're this little guy running around an alien world, jumping and falling from screen to screen to the beat of some kick-ass chiptunes. It doesn't have any of VVVVVV's abstract nonsense, though. And you have a teleport gun instead of the ability to inverse gravity. So I guess they're not all that similar... But seriously, those chiptunes! It's only about an hour long but it only costs a dollar, so it's hard not to recommend it.

Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove. I played the main campaign back when it first came out in 2014 but hadn't touched any of the DLC yet. Specter of Torment's recent release on PC gave me the push I needed to fire it back up and go through the whole thing. I'll cover each campaign separately since they're all essentially full games. Shovel of Hope. This is the now renamed main campaign and it's pretty much as excellent as I remembered. It also feels like the most complete one of the bunch since all the content was initially made for this one and is (mostly) re-used by the other two. Plague of Shadows. I'm of two minds about this one. It's essentially the same campaign as Shovel of Hope. You're going through the same levels, fighting (mostly) the same bosses and it uses the same world map. It's a new story that runs parallel to Shovel of Hope, so there are some small changes to make it all fit together. When you reach the first town, they won't let Plague Knight in because he's a bad guy, so you end up having a new hub under the city. And when you get to Plague Knight's level, the boss fight is against Shovel Knight instead. Overall, I was pretty happy with it despite the lack of new levels. Most of the new content comes from the design of Plague Knight himself and this is where I had some problems. He controls completely differently from Shovel Knight and has an entirely new set of items and abilities. The levels are slightly tweaked to accommodate his style of movement and there are extra rooms added here and there but that's about it. The thing is that he's much harder to control than Shovel Knight. I eventually figured him out and by the end of it he grew on me a lot, but at first I seriously hated him. For like half the campaign it really seemed like the difficulty was mostly coming from how he controlled like shit compared to Shovel Knight. I know now that that's not true but this one could've seriously benefited from some kind of a tutorial. It takes a lot more skills to be good with him than it does with Shovel Knight and that ended up making the early levels more frustrating than they should've been. Specter of Torment. I think I might actually like this one even more than the main Shovel of Hope campaign. Not only is Specter Knight super fun to play as, it also changes things up way more than Plague of Shadows. It's actually a prequel story (and a pretty good one, too!), you're not using the world map anymore and while the levels are still technically the same areas they're almost completely changed. It's a bit shorter but it actually feels like it could be its own separate game (well, I guess it technically is since you can buy it separately now). The quality of this one alone entirely justifies the price increase that happened recently. It's just that fucking good. So yeah, that was a pretty fun 30 hours or so. Really looking forward to King Knight's campaign now, although I imagine that's not coming for a while. I kinda hope Yacht Club will announce their next game before then, though. Whether it's Shovel Knight 2, Super Shovel Knight or something completely new, I'll be there day one. Unless it's that mode 7 kart racer that was listed in that survey they did. That sounds awful...

Yeah, I'm not interested in Halo enough to buy an Xbox for it but if they put the entire series on Steam then I'd definitely give it a shot. It would need to be the entire series, though. Like, I'm not jumping in if they randomly drop Halo 3 Anniversary out of nowhere. I don't even need multiplayer, just release the MCC single-player campaigns and charge a reasonable amount for it. But Halo Wars is certainly an encouraging start. It's the first proper console Halo game on Steam and it would be ridiculous if Halo Wars 2 doesn't eventually follow. It's also a low-key admission that Windows Store exclusivity just isn't financially viable even for their own first-party titles. I won't lie, I'm pretty happy about that. What I'm most curious about is whether it'll be UWP or Win32. If it's the latter, that's an even bigger deal.

What in the holy name of shit?? I don't know if that makes me want to hurry up and play the other Neptunia games already or just delete them from my Steam account altogether. That shit is creepy as hell. @deanbmmv I guess it's possible but I would assume it's probably more like here where the creators would be the most well-known to fans and not the executives. This just reeks of an ego thing. Like Tenshi said, having Yoko Taro in the game would make slightly more sense than the CEO of the company. I'm a huge Platinum fan and I don't even recognize their CEO.

Wasn't there also something like that in FFXV? What the fuck are they trying to accomplish here? Higher ups at Square-Enix see that people still love Iwata even after his death and they want in on it or something? I mean, I can accept a one-time thing as just being a joke but this is their second big release in a row to do something like this. It has to be an idea that's coming from the top and it's just fucking weird.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAH!

Turns out Infinite Climax mode is actually easier than hard. Either that or I seriously leveled up during my hard playthrough, because every single chapter I expected to have trouble with was mostly fine. I did use the Evil Harvest Rosary since witch time was disabled anyway but I didn't find it incredibly useful. At least, not as useful as witch time. The only thing that really made me rage was doing all the Alfheim portals. Some of them are just fucking brutal, and I did them on normal. Pretty sure that's my first proper Platinum game fully completed, too. I mean, technically second but Nier: Automata doesn't count since it's not a "real" Platinum game. Anyway, I sure wish I had some way of playing Bayonetta 2 right about now. I know a PC port of that one is incredibly unlikely but damn it, buy it from Nintendo or something, Sega.

Ah ok. Now that you mention it, I think it's not the first time we've had to re-add each other, actually. Anyway, that's Bayonetta hard mode done. Goddamn, what a rush. It's true what they say about Platinum's games. Normal really is just the tutorial. I don't know if I'm mentally prepared to tackle Infinite Climax mode just yet...

Uh, that's a weird one, yeah. Hardly what I'd consider a serious issue, though. As for completion, all you need to worry about is finishing SC by May 3rd. Everything else is irrelevant! Holy shit, 47 hours just for ending A? I can't even imagine what the hell you've been doing all this time. My playtime isn't just for getting all the main endings (that happened around the 35h mark), it's for getting all the achievements. Also, weren't we friends on Steam before? I looked for you in my friends list but ended up having to find your profile through the most recent secret santa thread.

Any unfinished side-quests will still be available on subsequent routes (as well as a few new ones). But more importantly, just ending A? Get out of this thread! You're not even remotely close to having beaten the game!!