Games You've Beat in 2014

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I loved that game, got the platinum.

[toxicitizen]

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky.

 

Well, I'm really glad I gave in to the hype and got this one because it was well worth the 20 bucks I dropped on it. I'm actually kinda shocked that it managed to live up to the hype. I usually try to keep my expectations in check but this one gets a LOT of praise in some corners of the internet.

 

The story itself isn't particularly amazing for the first half but the world and characters are so well-written and fleshed out that it still sucked me in almost instantly. This game is straight out of the SNES/PSOne golden era of JRPGs (though it originally came out in 2004, I think) and it was a blast to get into one of them like I used to back in the days. Especially considering my disappointingly failed attempt to get into the Tales of series a couple months back...

 

There's one area where I'm kinda glad the game didn't live up to the hype, though: the ending. I've known for a while that the game ends on a big cliffhanger and I was led to believe that it was a pretty intense one that would put even Lost to shame. Can't say I really agree there. It's a cliffhanger for sure and I'm definitely looking forward to Second Chapter, but I don't exactly need it in my veins or anything. I'm fine waiting a few more months for it. Of course, knowing that SC is actually coming, and sooner rather than later at that, might be a factor here. I definitely sympathize with the people who played this back in 2011 when XSEED first released the PSP version, without knowing if they'd even get SC. But as someone who was really into Lost, the cliffhanger itself feels pretty tame by comparison.

[TheMightyEthan]

I just love that its abbreviation is TitS.

[toxicitizen]

Definitely the best possible acronym.

[toxicitizen]

Ys Origin.

 

I cleared the game with Yunica last night. Overall, I'd say it's about on par with Oath in Felghana. It runs on the same engine so it plays essentially the same. Unfortunately, that means the return of the one thing I was happy Celceta did away with: jumping. Flying enemies and shitty platforming are the two things I find the most annoying in these games. But other than that it was pretty good. From what I heard, Origin wasn't as popular in Japan because Adol's not in it but I didn't have a problem with that. I also liked how the game entirely takes place in a single dungeon, it made for an interesting change. 

 

I started a new run with Hugo to see how different his story is but I'm not sure I'll bother finishing it. He's a more interesting character but I really don't like his shitty shmup-like attacks, it's just kind of awful. Or maybe I just suck. I'll have to do a run with the unlockable character, though. Apparently he has the true ending or whatever.

 

But yeah, after Celceta, Corpse Party, Trails and now this, I've been on kind of an XSEED/Falcom binge lately. Guess I might as well grab Ys Seven soon. Gonna have to play Corpse Party: Book of Shadows first, though. And then there's Disgaea 4 coming out in a couple weeks. Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze Seven in there...

[SomTervo]

Murdered: Soul Suspect.

 

Fucking refreshing. You don't fire a gun once. You don't take cover once. You barely even dispatch enemies (though when you do, it's stupid as hell).

 

Most of it is just some really nice investigation mechanics with a really strong, if slightly underdeveloped, story. Final twist which totally made up for fairly dull filler and some terrible extras. You can tell they could have done with £1 million more or an extra year or so. But it's still really, really good.

 

I hate the rough critical reception it got. It's such a solid, solid game.

Edited August 11, 2014 by kenshi_ryden

[TheMightyEthan]

I've only done two investigations (well three if you count a side quest I did), but so far I'm really enjoying it too.

[deanb]

Little Inferno.

 

Kinda fun, though tails off a lot at the end. Kinda crap ending to be honest. not quite enough to ruin the rest of the game, was a nice time waster and can't say I dislike burning stuff

[Mal]

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky.

 

Well, I'm really glad I gave in to the hype and got this one because it was well worth the 20 bucks I dropped on it. I'm actually kinda shocked that it managed to live up to the hype. I usually try to keep my expectations in check but this one gets a LOT of praise in some corners of the internet.

 

The story itself isn't particularly amazing for the first half but the world and characters are so well-written and fleshed out that it still sucked me in almost instantly. This game is straight out of the SNES/PSOne golden era of JRPGs (though it originally came out in 2004, I think) and it was a blast to get into one of them like I used to back in the days. Especially considering my disappointingly failed attempt to get into the Tales of series a couple months back...

 

There's one area where I'm kinda glad the game didn't live up to the hype, though: the ending. I've known for a while that the game ends on a big cliffhanger and I was led to believe that it was a pretty intense one that would put even Lost to shame. Can't say I really agree there. It's a cliffhanger for sure and I'm definitely looking forward to Second Chapter, but I don't exactly need it in my veins or anything. I'm fine waiting a few more months for it. Of course, knowing that SC is actually coming, and sooner rather than later at that, might be a factor here. I definitely sympathize with the people who played this back in 2011 when XSEED first released the PSP version, without knowing if they'd even get SC. But as someone who was really into Lost, the cliffhanger itself feels pretty tame by comparison.

Sums up my feelings pretty well. The game really shines once you get far enough in due to the level of world building that has gone into TitS. Before that, it leads you along with interesting characters and scenarios. Start small and grows big (Oddly in a good way, the game starts a bit open ended and then narrows towards the end). With the ending, the story for the Second Chapter can start anywhere.

 

Hopefully by winter I'll have SC to play. I'll have the pleasure of reading more treasure box messages.

 

With the SC, I hope the OST improves though. The tunes are nice but they sound kind of harsh. Another thing is to decrease the amount of treasure box monsters. The last level was honestly quite a chore. Kept me on my toes but still a chore.

 

Hopefully I'll see more good battles like with the unbeatable (?) boss. He was so fun to fight. 

[toxicitizen]

Sums up my feelings pretty well. The game really shines once you get far enough in due to the level of world building that has gone into TitS. Before that, it leads you along with interesting characters and scenarios. Start small and grows big (Oddly in a good way, the game starts a bit open ended and then narrows towards the end). With the ending, the story for the Second Chapter can start anywhere.

 

Hopefully by winter I'll have SC to play. I'll have the pleasure of reading more treasure box messages.

Yeah, ideally it'll come out just in time so I can play it over christmas break. That would be awesome.

 

With the SC, I hope the OST improves though. The tunes are nice but they sound kind of harsh. Another thing is to decrease the amount of treasure box monsters. The last level was honestly quite a chore. Kept me on my toes but still a chore.

 

Hopefully I'll see more good battles like with the unbeatable (?) boss. He was so fun to fight.

If you mean Lorence, apparently he is beatable. O_o Got my ass handed to me big time, though. And the evil bastards at XSEED made a Steam achievement for winning that fight.

 

And yeah, the OST of FC is a bit bland. Not terrible by any means but it never really stands out. But based on what little I've heard of the next two games, it does improve significantly!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R391GAyN_kM

 

[deanb]

Tomb Raider: The New One.

 

Pretty alright game. I quite like the ease with which it lets you go back to earlier areas to explore stuff. I'll probably end up with the new one some point. Certainly prefer it to my memoires of Tomb Raider: The Old One (well, apart from locking the butler up of course).

[danielpholt]

Valiant Hearts. 

 

The puzzles get a little tiresome after a while, but the art style and story carry it through. Oh god the story. 

 

I cried. No shame in it, the last 5 minutes ruined me on multiple levels. 

[deanb]

I guess I should add that somewhere into my upcoming Backlog.

[danielpholt]

I guess I should add that somewhere into my upcoming Backlog.

 

It's solid. I may have done it a disservice by saying the puzzles get tiring. They're not difficult, just a little boring. It's definitely worth a play-through though. 

[TheMightyEthan]

Murdered: Soul Suspect.  Quite liked it, certainly worth the $30 I paid.  Also 100%'d it, though 3 of the achievements appear to have glitched out. 

[Strangelove]

Diablo 3: UEE. I actually quite liked the campaign, especially those awesome cutscenes. Made me realize how out of style cg cutscenes are in videogames nowadays compared to the 90s and early 2000s. I prefer this myself, but its good to see some really great cg cutscenes in games every once in a while.

 

Im not sure what to do now, I guess I just do campaign again at a higher difficulty or just go to adventure mode?

Im so out of the loop that I have no idea what a lot of stuff means in this game.

What do people play to have their level 30008979759873 character after the campaign is over?

[Eleven]

Isn't there some sort of infinite mode? And my friends just level up their paragon levels... Or play other classes.

 

I'm not sure myself what I would do after my character's campaign...

[Strangelove]

Yeah, people like to boast about how they have 300 hours logged in or whatever, but Im not really seeing it here.

[Mister Jack]

It's Adventure time, baby!

 

[toxicitizen]

Im not sure what to do now, I guess I just do campaign again at a higher difficulty or just go to adventure mode?

Im so out of the loop that I have no idea what a lot of stuff means in this game.

What do people play to have their level 30008979759873 character after the campaign is over?

Paragon levels. Once you hit the level cap, your exp will go towards those. They give you points you can allocate however you wish to each of your main character stats.

 

And yeah, from this point on it's either higher difficulty or adventure mode. I'm not sure if the console version is different but on PC you have a lot more difficulty options since the expansion dropped. The hardest is Torment and it can be set from 1 to like 7. You need a pretty insanely geared character to tackle the more advanced Torment levels.

 

Adventure mode is pretty great if you just want more of the gameplay. It kept me busy for a few weeks after I cleared the expansion's campaign. Basically, the entire world map and waypoints are unlocked and each area/act has a set of five quests. Clear an entire act and you get a blood shards and Nephalem caches. The shards can be traded to a vendor for a random item (think of it as gambling) and the Nephalem caches are basically loot packs. It's kinda fun to accumulate a bunch and then mass open them.

Edited August 23, 2014 by FLD

[toxicitizen]

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne.

 

I should've finished this one last week but I got stuck (and frustrated) in the final dungeon, so when my copy of Disgaea 4 got here I just started playing that right away instead of waiting. I only went back to Nocturne a couple days ago. Overall, it was pretty damn good. The story was disappointingly basic but the gameplay was solid enough to carry the game. For the first 10 hours or so, I sometimes wished I was playing Persona instead, especially when I was fusing demons (being able to manually select which abilities are inherited during fusion in P4G has spoiled me). But after a while I really started to appreciate how different this game is. Particularly how it's structured like a real JRPG, with an overworld to explore and actual, designed dungeons.

 

There were times when the high encounter rate made some of those dungeons kinda frustrating, though. Nothing makes me hate random encounters more than getting one every 3 fucking steps when you know where you need to go and just want to get there already. Likewise, it can be pretty difficult and annoying to keep track of a convoluted teleporting puzzle in a dungeon when you're constantly interrupted by combat. Only 2-3 dungeons really suffered from that, though. For most of the game, it wasn't an issue.

 

One thing I really liked is that this game doesn't fuck around with boss fights. There's a boss like 5 hours in that's basically the game telling you "get your shit together or get out now!". If you've been neglecting buff/debuff abilities, he will fucking wreck your shit. And he won't be the only one.

 

I wasn't going for any specific ending, I just kinda played and picked whatever dialogue option I felt like, and ended up getting the neutral ending. I watched the others on youtube and man, do they all suck lol. At least mine was a little bit more satisfying but yeah, the story really isn't the point of this game. I have a back-up save made so that I can go finish the optional dungeon to get the true demon ending, though. I haven't watched that one.

 

Now to get a 3DS and play Shin Megami Tensei IV.

Edited August 24, 2014 by FLD

[deanb]

Likewise, it can be pretty difficult and annoying to keep track of a convoluted teleporting puzzle in a dungeon when you're constantly interrupted by combat. Only 2-3 dungeons really suffered from that, though. For most of the game, it wasn't an issue.

 

One thing I really liked is that this game doesn't fuck around with boss fights. There's a boss like 5 hours in that's basically the game telling you "get your shit together or get out now!". If you've been neglecting buff/debuff abilities, he will fucking wreck your shit. And he won't be the only one.

Now I remember why I stopped playing it all those..fuck 10 years ago? wow. I did quite enjoy what I'd played though, just stupid dungeon thing pissed me off.

 

The Matador was one hell of a boss fight.

 

Fun fact: It's "Lucifer's Call" over here.

[toxicitizen]

Yeah, Matador is the one I was talking about. I had heard all about him so I was prepared for the fight but he still wiped the floor with me on my first attempt. He's not really all that difficult if you know what to watch out for but otherwise it's downright brutal.

 

And the alternate title for Europe kinda confuses me because that's a bit of a spoiler, kinda? It's not like it's a major plot point but when you meet that character it's not immediately clear who he actually is. I get dropping the III from the title because it was the first core SMT game released in english but changing the subtitle to that is like wut.

Edited August 24, 2014 by FLD

[Alex Heat]

One thing I really liked is that this game doesn't fuck around with boss fights. There's a boss like 5 hours in that's basically the game telling you "get your shit together or get out now!". If you've been neglecting buff/debuff abilities, he will fucking wreck your shit. And he won't be the only one.

 

Matador separates the men from the boys.  There was a certain amount of delight to be had in having my friends come to me later like 'WHAT THE FUCK THIS BOSS IS BULLSHIT!' after having only played Persona 3 or 4 because all you can really say is...Welcome to the real SMT experience, my friend.

[Strangelove]

Resident Evil Revelations HD.

I played it when it came out on 3DS, but its so much better on PS3 though. Controls so much better.

The 3DS version is still the best looking 3DS game, so this was a good title to bring over to consoles. It looks really nice, Im kind of shocked that Capcom would put this much money into a portable title. On 3DS at that. Seems kind of like a waste considering the resolution of it's screen.

Anyways, onto Raid mode.