MetalCaveman

Senran Kagura Estival Versus Also got the Platinum. Had some issues with the camera and lock on stuff, but overall it was a pretty fun game, musou gameplay so you know what you're getting into, although some enemies are pretty annoying to deal with, unless you use counters, or special attacks. Daidoji is hilariously overpowered lol, even at level 1, she can one-shot bosses in Frantic mode. Story is pretty good, the setup of being in a festival were souls of the dead return allows for several characters getting some closure, even the character stories, which are usually more on the funny side do have a couple of emotional moments. I'll be going through Peach Beach Splash soon, try and get the Platinum too, but iirc this was the last game of the main series to have this kind of serious/dark(ish) story alongside the more fanservicey elements. A pretty easy Platinum too. Grade: S

Would've loved a simultaneous release on PS5, but oh well, at least it's coming out this year lol

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers Gameplay, atmosphere, music, bosses, enemies, everything was a 10/10, easily one of my favourite Soulslike games, Fromsoft games included... Then update 1.5 happened lol. 1.5 Added some good stuff (elevator speed being the main thing imo), but it also changed a ton of stuff in terms of story and NPCs, the result is that the story loses a lot of impact, several enemies are now passive towards you, some bosses no longer die, they just need a nap and they're fine, some dialogue was changed and some new lines were added to reflect the rest of the changes. So, even though the rest of the game is still a 10/10, the changes made to the story make it hard to recommend.

Playing through a bunch of games right now, but I doubt I'll finish any of them before end of year, so here's my list for 2025: Star Fox 64 Star Fox Adventures Star Fox Assault P.N. 03 Area 51 Def Jam: Vendetta Def Jam: Fight for NY Ninja Gaiden Sigma Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge Elden Ring Nightreign Sekiro The Suffering The Suffering: Ties that Bind Lords of the Fallen Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Ninja Gaiden 2 Black The Surge Ninja Gaiden 4 Two less games than last year, still better than expected though.

It's that time of the year again. Digimon Story: Time Stranger This year I played through Cyber Sleuth and I'm currently going through Hacker's Memory, both have been really fun, so when I booted the demo for Time Stranger and saw how much better everything looked, that immediately was my "GOTY" moment, been playing for a bit and so far everything seems like a huge improvement (except for agent level, but we'll see how that goes lol).

Beta registrations open. Both Ananta and this one are picking up the pace lol, meanwhile, Azur Promilia seems to be headed towards a delayed global release.

My album of the year:

Ninja Gaiden 4 It's 100% a Platinum Games game, just with the Ninja Gaiden name, the gameplay, music, writing, story, everything is 100% Platinum. Which isn't a bad thing, IF you're looking for a new Platinum game, if you were looking for a new Ninja Gaiden game, your mileage may vary. For me personally, I wasn't feeling it at the start, then towards the end I had some fun, even started to like it, except for one thing: The Platinum Platforming Bullshit (PPBS for short lol), if you've watched the trailers you've seen part of it, Yakumo rail grinding or gliding while dodging obstacles, I've never been a fan of this stuff, and this was no exception, chapter 10 was particularly bad because of this. The worst part is that every time I felt like I was actually having fun, PPBS would strike and take me out of it. Overall, if this had been a spin-off I would have enjoyed it a lot more, remove the PPBS and it would have easily been a 9/10. Grade: B-

Digimon Story Time Stranger, bought it for PS5 and today I saw it went on sale on Steam lol, oh well.

Game Awards time! New demo January 29. September 9th. NEW ACE COMBAT!!! \m/ \m/ Brief gameplay shown, but now it looks more actiony than Soulslike lol, still looking forward to it though. This one I'm marking as spoilers, the PS Store sorta already leaked it, but still, spoilers for Resident Evil Requiem:

The Surge This was a thing. A sci-fi Soulslike is a cool concept, and one I'd like to see more of, but this game is just lots of interesting ideas and systems, but with a pretty clunky implementation, it's also a bit of a grindfest. The whole "target different body parts" is an interesting idea but most weapons feel really clunky and slow, heavy weapons specially, feel completely useless with how slow they are and how easy it is to get staggered. Leveling up is different too, you don't put points into stats, instead, you level up your energy, which allows you to equip more implants, which is what determines your stats, want more HP? Get HP implants, or stamina, or energy, etc. Implants are how you build your character. This is part of the grind, not enough HP? Farm for a better health implant. Need more energy? Farm for a better energy implant, repeat for any implant you may need. Right from the start, you don't get your full gear set, you need to farm for the missing pieces, more grind. The whole idea is neat, want a specific helmet? Target the enemy's head! This applies to the different gear pieces, except once you get it, you get the schematic, then you have to farm for materials to craft or upgrade each piece. Got a trophy for clearing a dark area with a specific weapon type simply because I couldn't get the chest piece (which has your lamp) to drop, instead got a weapon that glowed and decided that was good enough. There are different areas, but within each area it's super easy to get lost because everything looks the same. Last boss was a pain, actually uninstalled the game for a while, then today I went back and managed to defeat it, I was ready to give up again when I saw it had a second phase lol. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this one, second is supposed to be better so I'm looking forward to it. Grade: F

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black More accurately, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Black. This builds upon NG Sigma 2 improving things, removing some of the boss fights that were added for Sigma, removing an area in the late game that was pretty annoying, plus some other good stuff. Overall, it's a pretty big improvement over Sigma 2, still doesn't beat OG 2 IMO, but if you don't have access to OG 2, this is the next best thing. Grade: A+

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Though it has some serious issues with localization/translation*, it was still a really fun game, with a cool story, ending had me in tears lol. *Some stuff doesn't make sense, other stuff feels out of place, in the Digiline thing for example, there's this message exchange that went a little something like this: What?! Being the complete edition, which includes Hacker's Memory, there's a ton of Digimon that you can get, I was able to get pretty much all I wanted for my main party, only one missing was Beelstarmon, but I don't know if she was around when these games came out lol. Fun thing, on Switch (don't know if this happens on PlayStation), putting the console on sleep mode doesn't stop in-game time, this means that any Digimons you have on your farm will continue to level up. This makes it super easy to end up with Mega Digimon early on, depending on how often you play, it's cool though, because you can leave a Digimon on the farm while you do other stuff, then when you come back to play, you can add that Digimon to your party and they'll have leveled up a bunch, no need to grind for XP. The main dungeon does get a bit repetitive, different floors have different gimmicks, but it all kinda looks the same, however, that didn't bother me that much. Only thing I had an issue with was the last boss, felt more like a test of patience than a challenge, but that was mostly due to my party, apparently depending on which Digimon you have, you can end that fight super fast. Definitively recommend this one if you're a fan of Digimon. Grade: A+

It looks cool, but it also doesn't feel like real gameplay, looks really choreographed, way too smooth for a boss fight IMO. With a title like Total Chaos I was expecting full action stuff, not creepy horror stuff. This one was pretty interesting, not too sure about the rogue-lite aspects though, but it could be fun.

Would like for some of this stuff (mostly the Gabecube and the controller) to be available here, but I doubt that'll be the case lol.