Games You've Beat in 2017

[FMW]

Final Fantasy 8.  I finally beat it.

 

I've never had a love/hate relationship with a game like this.  There's been plenty of like/dislike, but I can't think of a single game that was both this good and this terrible.

 

The combat mechanics are stupid, the best way to level up is to stand still in battle and draw spells over and over for 5-10 minutes at a time.  Enemies auto scaling to your level works terribly.  The UI is terrible.  The junction system is incredibly finicky.  It's easy to get lost, nothing you can interact with is well defined from the environment and even doors are frequently hard to find.  The plot has a laughably awful reveal where EVERYONE is an orphan and they ALL have amnesia.  The final dungeon of the game is hair pullingly frustrating.  It strips you of all your powers and then randomizes the levels of all the mobs.  So it is 100% possible to get destroyed through no fault of your own.  Also it's filled with terrible puzzles.

 

BUT

 

Squall is one of the best realized characters I've inhabited in a video game.  Yes he's a douche, but a lot of people are!  And the game created complete empathy for him as a human being through his constant thought bubbles running commentary through the game.  He starts one place, has a proper arc, ends in another place without ever losing his initial character traits.  The soundtrack justifies the entire endeavor on its own.  The use of CG and cinematic flair blew me away in 2017.  It's not showy for the sake of it, they do some seriously cool stuff with their tech.  The game used the Laguna sections to explore alternate gameplay content and tones extremely well.  The game never stopped throwing in new ideas up through the final level.  Even if those ideas were sometimes terrible, most RPGs only have new ideas for the first 10 hours and then you're just executing the formula from there.  No so in FF 8.

 

I have never played a game more worthy of a remake.  What FF 8 achieves is timeless, what FF 8 fails at is easily replaced.  You know, those pesky "game mechanics and level design" things.

[Mister Jack]

FFVIII is the only game I ever used a trainer on because fuck spending hours just drawing magic.  Oh, and don't forget the extremely long summon cutscenes that you can't skip because you have to spend the whole time mashing square to boost your summon's power.  Oh, but don't mash it at the wrong time!  Otherwise your summon boost goes back down to zero and all that time was wasted.  God damn this game had so many stupid ideas.  I'd rather play FFXIII again than go back to that.

[Mal]

Little King's Story
 

I love and hate this game. I love the gameplay (in general), the aesthetics, music and even the nonsense story. What I hate is the reliance on 30 FPS Mode to beat most bosses due to some animation speeds being tied to frame rate. I knew it coming in but the good feeling game is now sluggish. I just can't believe how much it affected me. The last boss' final form was a piece of cake on 30 FPS since his instant kill move (a gaming sin) now has a very generous wind up time. His projectiles are now also dodge-able (goes for all of them really). I also think there's something funky with the port or my machine running this game. The audio can desync from animation during cutscenes which indicates to me that there's some deeper issue with the port.

 

I'm glad that I got to play it since I think I could put it as one of my favorite or memorable games but god damn this port.

And I swear it shouldn't take 64 hours to beat.

Edited February 25, 2017 by Mal

[toxicitizen]

Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book.

 

Finished it last night. It was my first Atelier game and for the most part I really enjoyed it. For the first 20 hours or so it was basically crack, I couldn't get enough of it. Then I started putting more effort into alchemy and getting better at it and had a sudden realization of "holy shit, this game can turn into fucking work!" And I mean that in a good way, it's just something that I can personally find a little tedious at times. Like, when a request wants me to make a specific item with a specific trait on it and none of its base materials have it, it becomes a game of figuring out which material does have the trait and what I can transform it into to eventually use it to make the requested item. It's fun stuff but when your container gets pretty full the UI can make it a pain in the ass to figure out whether you even have something with the trait on it.

 

Another thing worth mentioning is that the game has a pretty low level cap. So once you start going after late (or post)-game bosses, it's not all about grinding to brute force the numbers. You can still improve your characters' stats but the main thing is you need to craft higher quality materials to have the blacksmith make you better weapons. I thought it was a pretty neat twist on the typical JRPG grind and it really fits with the game's theme, so it gets bonus points for that.

 

So yeah, I'm glad I finally gave the series a shot and I definitely plan on playing more of it in the future. I probably won't get Atelier Firis at launch, though, since it's coming out in like 2 weeks and it's day and date with console, so it'll probably be 60 bucks or so. I really hope they eventually go back and port the older games to PC as well, I'd love to play the Arland and Dusk trilogies but I'd rather not do it on Vita.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

One of us!

[Mal]

ICEY

 

I think I beat it? Like the Stanley Parable, you're never quite sure if you beat the game.

It's a short game that I got back around to beat. At its core, ICEY is a good 2D brawler with really responsive controls. It feels really nice to murder everything nice and quickly. The bosses has their own quirks and are pretty straightforward. The level design though is not that straightforward since it branches a lot. You can disobey the Narrator in the fashion that seems appropriate to you and just have fun.

 

New and free DLC is dropping tomorrow so I look forward to that. English narration by MGS5 Quiet's VA is coming too!

[TheMightyEthan]

Finally finished Recore.  Good game, I enjoyed it more than the 63% metacritic would suggest.  My only real complaint is that you have to be nearly at max level to beat the last bit of the story, which requires more grinding than I would have liked.  I would have preferred that the story be completable at a lower level and simply have more side stuff available for higher levels.

[Strangelove]

Just finished Shadow Of Mordor. What the fuck? It's absolutely not award winning in the slightest. Just completely unexceptional in every way. And that last boss fight was shitballs.

[toxicitizen]

Outland.

 

I played a little bit of it on PS3 back in like 2011 but never got very far into it. I'm really glad it ended up appearing on Steam out of nowhere a couple years back because I grabbed it during a sale at some point and finally got around to playing it, which would not have happened if it had remained a console exclusive.

 

Anyway, it's this weird mix of metroidvania and bullet hell. Yes, it's as weird as it sounds. It does this thing like Ikagura where you have blue mode and red mode and by swapping between the two you can avoid damage from the same color of projectiles. It's pretty cool but it does require a certain kind of coordination and timing that my brain kinda sucks at, so I was not very good at it. Not the best metroidvania I've ever played but it's definitely worth a look.

 

 

Stories Untold.

 

Really enjoyed this one. I was right that it's more than just a text adventure but I don't know if I'd call it meta. Experimental is probably a better way to describe it. I'm hesitant to really talk about what it's actually like because the fun mainly comes from figuring out what you have to do and what is actually going on. All I'll say is that you're doing much more than just reading text and typing actions. It's a bit on the short side (took me around 3 hours to finish all 4 episodes) but I think it was worth the 10 bucks for the novelty of it alone.

[Mister Jack]

Nioh with the true ending.

 

This one was kind of a gamble for me since I still wasn't totally sure I was on board with the "Soulsborne" genre, or whatever you want to call it, but man am I glad I took a chance on it because so far this is my favorite game of 2017.  I'm sure this is an unpopular opinion, but I had WAY more fun with this than I did with Bloodborne, and I actually liked Bloodborne.  There's just so much more depth to the combat--in fact, this game has one of my favorite combat systems in any game ever.  The constant loot dropping a la Diablo also made it really addictive, and while the game was definitely hard, the fights felt more fair to me than some of the ones in Bloodborne did.  You're much more agile in this game and can dodge most attacks if you pay attention to enemy tells and use the proper stance.  I've got 70% of the trophies already so I'm going to try (keyword: try) to platinum this one.  I'm also thinking I'll probably buy the season pass once I hear details on what's actually being added.  I've heard rumors of two new weapon types, which would make an already diverse fighting system even better.  I got my fingers crossed for nunchuks.  

[Saturnine Tenshi]

The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine

 

Strangely, I've finished three games this year. That's . . . quite a lot for two months. For me anyway. Blood and Wine's Toussaint is far and above the best region I've visited in the Witcher series. Love the colorful Rococo it has going. And it feels like a proper expac. Too bad it's the end of things. I had some trouble with the Skellige deck at first because I approached it wrong, but after I figured how to get the base deck all was tickety-boo. Enjoyed it thoroughly. Maybe not as much as the vanilla game simply because of the nature of the stories involved, but it had at least one returning character from the books who wasn't in the previous games. And some great characters and scenes of its own. Altogether great.

 

Now I need to get the 5 achievements I'm missing, which involves replaying the core game on the hardest difficulty.

[toxicitizen]

Styx: Master of Shadows.

With the sequel coming out in a couple weeks, I felt like replaying this. It started out mostly as an excuse to finish getting all the achievements but I ended up falling in love with the game all over again. I'd almost forgotten how fucking great of a stealth game this is. You know a game has solid level design when the second you're reminded of a map you remember pretty much the entire layout instantly. I really hope the sequel will live up to it in that regard, those maps are just so much fun to traverse. The amount of verticality and alternate paths to be found in them is just insane. Hell, I explored them all pretty thoroughly the first time around but I'm pretty sure I found a few new ones I had missed back then.

 

It's also still the best example of map re-use I've ever seen in a game. You can tell they were designed from the ground up to work as levels in both directions, with each one being challenging in a different way. I'm pretty sure it was done as a cost-cutting measure (almost every single map is used at least twice) but it was done so well that I almost want to sequel to keep doing it. The way you're constantly backtracking through a previous area on your way somewhere else ends up making the Atrium feel like a real, cohesive place. Almost like a mini open-world.

 

Anyway, feels good to finally have completed it.

 

 

March 14th can't come quickly enough!

Edited March 6, 2017 by FLD

[deanb]

I didn't manage to finish it, felt really solid though, but after the..reversal and working way back it kinda spiked a bit too much in difficulty for me. Maybe I wasn't as attuned into the mechanics. But yeah, solid title and iirc it launched at like £20 which is pretty rare these days. Not gonna be diving on the sequal ASAP but it'll be in my peripheral.

[toxicitizen]

Yeah, it's unapologetically a "pure" stealth game, there's no shooting/fighting your way out of a mistake. You get spotted, you get your shit fucked. I can totally see how that might be a turn off to some but personally it's exactly why I love it so much. In many ways, it feels more like a true spiritual successor to Thief than Dishonored ever was.

 

And yeah, the first one was pretty much a budget title and the price actually reflected that. The sequel still isn't quite full price but it did get a bit of a bump. Hopefully that's indicative of a budget increase rather than just a cash in.

Edited March 6, 2017 by FLD

[Strangelove]

Horizon: Zero Dawn. Got the platinum trophy as well.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Horizon: Zero Dawn. Got the platinum trophy as well.

The fuck

[deanb]

I follow Rob from PS Access on Twitter, and he's had the game sometime before launch and even he's like "congrats for folks getting platinum in HZD but where did you get the time turners?". I guess it's either really addictive for some people (and tbh I've seen Strangelove in it everytime I've booted up the game) or maybe it's just an easyish game to platinum.

[TheMightyEthan]

Jesus dude.

[Strangelove]

It's a pretty easy game to platinum if you have the time for it. There aren't any difficulty trophies and all the collectibles are on the map, so you don't need to look online for anything. There also isn't any grinding since you'll reach level 50 by just playing all the side missions.

[toxicitizen]

Of Orcs and Men.

 

Well, that was way more fun than it had any right to be. I can honestly say I didn't expect to enjoy this one so much. Much like Styx, it's clearly a budget title but it's nowhere near the same level of quality. Styx is basically 9/10 gameplay with 6/10 budget and production values whereas Orcs is a more even 6-7/10 across the board. It doesn't look particularly good (though to be fair, Styx's and the orcs' models are pretty nice), it's overly linear and simplistic as an RPG and the light tactical combat is serviceable at best. 

 

The only aspect of it that remotely qualifies as good is the game's world and, to an extent, the story. Problem is, they clearly ran out of time or money (probably both). So, the first two chapters are reasonably meaty, with a handful of optional missions, decent length main missions and even have a small hub-like room that serves as your base. But from chapter 3 and beyond, something ran out and all of that is gone. It makes the story's climax and resolution feel a lot smaller and empty than they should, which is unfortunate because it's a pretty novel premise and it was actually kind of ambitious. It really could've benefited from a Bioware-like budget and production values. Also, I was pleasantly surprised to see some consistency with the story from Styx. When Orcs and Men started touching on Styx's backstory, I braced myself for some kind of massive contradiction or inconsistency but it actually lined up pretty well with what happens in Styx.

 

So, if it's not that great of a game, why was it so much fun then? Styx, obviously! If it had just been a game about a big lumbering orc stomping around and smashing things, it wouldn't have been anywhere near this enjoyable for me. The dynamic of controlling both Styx and Arkail is where the game really shined. Styx can turn invisible and take out enemies instantly as long as he remains undetected, so before entering open combat you're running around the place with Styx and taking out as many guards as you can ahead of time. It barely qualifies as stealth but here's where things get ridiculous. These guards are the most blind and completely braindead assholes I've seen in a while. Their peripheral vision is absolutely shit, so they'll all be standing within clear sight of each other but if you can find the one that's standing just a liiiiittle bit out of the way to the side you can start a picking them off one by one without them ever noticing you. Also, patrolling enemies will walk right past any corpse you leave behind without batting an eye. It's the most ridiculous fucking thing. If you don't mind jank, there's a ton of fun to be had here.

 

There's two studios credited as developers on this, one of which (Cyanide) went on to make the Styx games. I'm not entirely sure what the other studio (Spiders) was responsible for but they have made other RPGs that seem at least somewhat similar to Orcs and Men mechanically. So, I'm definitely gonna check those out at some point.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Mass Effect 2.

 

Eh.

[TheMightyEthan]

I'm actually considering cancelling my Andromeda preorder, since I don't think I'll be done with Zelda by then and I was already iffy on whether I'd be able to finish Andromeda before Persona 5 came out...

[deanb]

And the whole "it's mass effect and they're likely to disappoint than not"

[TheMightyEthan]

Well yeah, if I were more sure it'd be great then I'd be looking at cancelling P5 instead.

[Mr. GOH!]

Horizon" Zero Dawn.

 

Loved it, aside from some of the voice acting and facial animations. I was way overleveled for the second half of the game. 

 

Cannot wait for the sequel.