Games You've Beat in 2017

[toxicitizen]

9 minutes ago, Mal said:

If you are running some odd resolution then you'll get a double movie in the film strip cutscenes. A little odd and annoying but the core gameplay is normal and chances are you'll hit a stable 60fps. I'm sure there are people out there seeing if they can unlock it and then see what happens...

On the Hollow Knight front, I might just beat the game again since I have what I need for another ending. Then back on to Trails SC. Then Nier Automata. Then Bayonetta. If I'm successful you guys will see a completion rate unseen in me for years.

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!

6 minutes ago, Saturnine Tenshi said:

Yeah, I know about the quests. Don't rush me! I spent a lot of time doing random shit like fishing and upgrading weapons before pressing on. Only 9 hours behind you in hours played.

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.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

I had a habit of just removing swathes of people if I was in a shitty mood the last few years. That's likely all it was. Added you again! I did actually check my friends list. Expected to find you there.

Also have a habit of being slow as fuck and exploring more than I probably should be. I did a great deal of shit before you could fast travel, too. Would've saved so much time. :\

And spending 2 hours trying to kill the level 60 Father Servo at level 28 only to find you have to kill the fucker twice.

[toxicitizen]

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... 

[Mister Jack]

Persona 5

God damn, what a game.  I'm torn between whether I like the story and characters of this one or P4 more, but the gameplay is definitely the best it's ever been for this series, and it's easily one of the best JRPGs I've ever played.  It took me 99 hours to finally finish it and I already want to dive right back in to start New Game+.  I'm going to try to platinum this one, but that trophy for hearing 250 navigation lines might be my undoing.  I dunno, but it doesn't bother me too much since I just want to spend more time with this game.  If you like JRPGs at all and have a PS4, this is an absolute must-play.

[Hot Heart]

Mass Effect: Andromeda

I'll put my lengthier and spoilerier thoughts in the Mass Effect thread but, overall, I really enjoyed it. It's a little tough to talk about generally, and I lack any reference within BioWare's output, so maybe it is more succinctly described as "Inquisition in space" but I can only talk as a "Mass Effect fan".

My main criticism is that this game should not have been released in this state. Funnily enough, it's not like BioWare games of old where you might want to keep multiple saves in case of game-breaking bugs, but there are so many little niggling things and a few quest-breaking elements. My second major criticism is actually that I don't think the game should've gone semi-open-world. I mean, in some contexts it works in its narrative approach, but it also somewhat shrinks its "world" and adds to the repetitiveness of open-world games.

Overall, though, I really liked the combat, levelling, crafting stuff, while the attention given to building an attachment to your crew and squadmates really worked for me, even if they were probably the least interesting of all ME casts (ME3 would probably win here if not for the returning ones though). There's so much incidental dialogue and fun crew banter that it's a real shame when the game cuts it off thanks to Jarvis SAM or mission dialogue. I always felt it kind of cheesy to see so many people hooked up on the romantic stuff but the way it's handled here, and maybe this is my age and changing attitude talking, is really quite sweet. It's mostly subtle things, but it also helps dispel that notion of sex being a game reward/achievement (even if there is a trophy for getting three relationships across playthroughs..). In fact, in some sense of approaching it more "maturely", it seems like one crewmate is even open to a casual thing. I think that path was locked off for me but a friend told me as such.

I think the game will be a tough sell, even to many Mass Effect fans, because it does feel like there's "something" missing or it's just that the whole new approach doesn't feel as comfortably familiar. It really wants to be a blend of ME1 and ME2 in many ways, but also selling itself as a new beginning. In any case, I'd advise curious latecomers to wait until they patch a bunch of the issues.

[toxicitizen]

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...

Edited April 22, 2017 by FLD

[toxicitizen]

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.

[CorgiShinobi]

Batman: The Telltale Series

Pretty solid and worth the asking price. I would still put Walking Dead 1 - 2 and The Wolf Among Us above it, but it does keep you engaged given that this series is using a whole different Batman universe. One where he's somewhat established, but he doesn't have a defined rogue's gallery. That's a bit of its fault too.

Not to spoil anything, but it can ruin your perception of choice when you know what kind of character you're dealing with, even if Bruce himself isn't aware. Now there are some real curve balls, but it doesn't change the moment-to-moment gameplay much. That's how the game engages you, not in its overall story, but the moments you find yourself in with these characters.

It doesn't get as deep as it would let on given that there's some troubled history for everyone. If you're familiar with Batman and Gotham, you know people getting screwed is the natural order of the city. You can make Batman a brutal character, but the point of the game is if Bruce or Batman is the true identity. Something that has been touched on before, but here it does feel like a more personal choice given that you have decided on which character to rely on most.

I give it 4/5 Batarangs

[TheFlyingGerbil]

I've had this post open for over a week now as I couldn't decide what to write. I finished Uncharted 4, and I don't want to piss on its chips as it certainly wasn't bad, but... the thing that impressed me most was that the mirrors in the game worked so I guess underwhelmed? I've never liked the series as much as I've thought I should but stupidly got my hopes up again for this one as it was supposed to be more exploration focused with multiple routes. There definitely was less combat but it was still really obviously telegraphed and the multiple routes seemed mostly to boil down to being able to walk either side of a stone pillar and a lot of annoying and pointless dead ends. It all felt so limited after Breath of The Wild, for example not being able to backtrack, and it being completely arbitrary what you can and can't climb. It's still very much a corridor, just a wider corridor. I know there were bits I missed out and could replay to explore more but I just don't feel the motivation to and I don't think I could take another block pushing puzzle. It was almost comical the amount they shoved in there. The most egregious example was when you arrived in Scotland. A tiny scree slope even I could get up and by the wall a load of barrels you could easily climb, but no, back you go to get a wheeled crate.

 Drake still seemed as selfish an arsehole as ever and I was honestly a bit peeved it all ended happily ever after. I don;t think he deserves to be happy.

I guess that sounds more negative than I felt, but the whole thing just left me cold inside.

[FMW]

I beat Shovel Knight Spectre of Torment!  Goddamn that's good!  They don't make 'em like that any more.  Every level is just a sequence of ideas.  "Here you encounter green bouncy goo.  Next room you must use it to traverse lava.  Next room you must avoid bouncing too high off it lest you impale yourself on ceiling spikes.  Next room you must apply green goo to a lantern to solve a tricky jumping puzzle.  Next room lets put it all together.  And a boss.  Next level, next idea, no more green goo."

This is a lot of what I wanted from Zelda Breath of the Wild and didn't get.  Coherent sequential level design.  It's gone out of style.  Everything is about being open and making your own fun now.  I don't want that!  I want really smart curated fun from great level designers.  Like those Shovel Knight guys!

I also beat Shin Megami Tensei Digital Devil Saga part 2.  On one hand I kinda want to hate the ending.  They basically pull a "all the world needs is love, that would solve all our problems" resolution.  Suuuuper trite.  But instead of calling it love, they specifically invoke the Shan-ti Shan-ti Shan-ti Om mantra.  And the whole game has been about Hinduism.  To be fair, the theology there is that if you truly do wish for peace and sacrifice yourself for others then you will ascend from this mortal plain (or at least be reincarnated to a better life).

So on one hand, from a Western storytelling perspective ending with "I have achieved enlightenment, the world just needs to remember to desire peace and to abandon selfishness" is trite and reductive as hell.  But on the other hand... that's kinda how the theology works.  And what, am I gonna go bitching about a game actually having a theme and representing a real world religious philosophy?  JRPGs have a problem with being vapid, so I should celebrate that this one was not.

...but it still ended with a hippy bullshit All You Need Is Love

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Final ending of NieR: Automata. Perhaps one of the best games I've ever played.

[Mal]

Trails in the Sky: Second Chapter

Let's say there is a reason why this series is legendary and leave it at that.

As for my specific experience, I beat the game with a ragtag team even when I had a party in mind.

Spoiler

Estelle, Joshua, Agate and Vander. I somehow beat Loewe, easily the hardest boss in the game, with this essentially melee team with no group healing arts. You know the trope of hording super revival and healing items? It paid off. This fight also taught me to divide my team up into pairs so any group attack will generally only target two people. It's almost essential for the lions. Anyhow, after this fight you get pushed into the final boss after a short break. It's almost cruel that I couldn't trade off characters to build a more even team but what I learned in the Loewe fight made the last boss easy enough.

My team that I intended to go in for the final show down was Estelle, Joshua, Kloe (I had her all decked out to murder anything with arts as well as heal) and probably Tita since she's an absolute tank with her final (?) armor and she can group heal for 3500 that cures any status aliments. After beating the game though, I'm curious what would happen if I had Kevin. How would he sneak off to kill the heretic (his words!!!).

And by Aidios, if there are six (?) other people like the Professor in addition to the Grandmaster for Ouroboros, not to mention the gifts from Aidios Herself, how many games will the Trails series eventually have? With Zero, Ao, and the Cold Steel trilogy, I'm very curious what's the state of that world is at.

Oh Aidios, I want to play 3rd like right now and I'm exhausted. If the average length holds at ~75-80 hours for the games, I got to keep on top of the series before I get flooded by the Cold Steel trilogy. Having all that much of the series in a backlog would seem very very daunting.

Oh yeah.

Spoiler

Cassius, what the fuck? I swear he probably met Aidios Herself.

Edit: ... I think there's seriously a theory that he did.

 

Edited April 29, 2017 by Mal

[toxicitizen]

2 hours ago, Mal said:

  Hide contents

After beating the game though, I'm curious what would happen if I had Kevin. How would he sneak off to kill the heretic (his words!!!).

And by Aidios, if there are six (?) other people like the Professor in addition to the Grandmaster for Ouroboros, not to mention the gifts from Aidios Herself, how many games will the Trails series eventually have? With Zero, Ao, and the Cold Steel trilogy, I'm very curious what's the state of that world is at.

 

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.

2 hours ago, Mal said:

Oh Aidios, I want to play 3rd like right now and I'm exhausted. If the average length holds at ~75-80 hours for the games, I got to keep on top of the series before I get flooded by the Cold Steel trilogy. Having all that much of the series in a backlog would seem very very daunting.

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?!

Edited April 29, 2017 by FLD

[Mal]

It would be awesome if they spaced Cold Steel I and II out by at most six months. So say a June/July/Aug release for I, then have II out in in December. For the next month or two, I want to have a slow time with 3rd so I can not feel rushed  (I skipped quite the few things in SC). As for between CS I and II, as far as Falcom games goes there is Ys VIII between the two. Even if it was XSEED who did Ys VIII, it be silly to have two Falcom games to compete for time. Ys games are actually kind of sizable due to their difficulty at times. 

This lag time also gives XSEED (it has to be them) time for Ao and Zero (They'll come. I feel it in my bones). I want the Crossbell games! Crossbell was named drooped so hard in SC. Besides, CS III finishes the Crossbell games as well from what I hear.

Then of course as a consumer, I want to play other games as well, like say Nier Automata. That's a time sink as well. Let not also forget my love, EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 5. I sank 250 hours into 4.1. 

What a busy year. Last year was intense but this year is another beast. 

[toxicitizen]

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)

Spoiler

 

[Mal]

50 minutes ago, FLD said:

3rd is basically guaranteed to sell like absolute shit

Looking at the achievements, only like a 1/3 of people who bought SC on GOG beaten it. Compound it whatever FC has and yeah, I can see that. One thing to note, us XSEED/Falcom whores double or more dip quite frequently, like I just did with FC on GOG ($10). We're so desperate for the rest of the games. Even places like /v/ (8chan, halfchan, etc), dens of pirates, you specifically see anons highly encouraging people to buy the games which is unusual. Hell, personally, I've considered gifting the games during Secret Santa but jeez, they're quite intense gifts to just toss on people.

It should be mentioned that there are fan translations in progress for I think Ao and Zero. You can imagine how difficult they are to complete.

Anyhow, I'm considering going through the end bosses again for special scenes. That or I just read it up online...

---
Edit: I think it's about time for a Falcom thread.

Edited April 30, 2017 by Mal
5k of shitposting

[toxicitizen]

Done.

[TheMightyEthan]

132 hours later, Persona 5.  Beat my previous record for a single playthrough (DA:I) by 11 hours.

I am honestly tempted to dive straight back in to NG+... (I think I'll knock a few things off my backlog first though.)

[Mister Jack]

Catherine.  Katherine ending.

My PS3 is collecting dust so I decided I should sell it soon and maybe get a PS VR in the near future, but I wanted to play one last game on it.  I bought this a while back on sale for five bucks and never got around to it and I didn't want that purchase to go to waste.  This ended up being an interesting experience because puzzle games are never really my thing and...this is no exception.  I was pretty invested in the story and where it was going, but whenever it came time to actually push blocks around I just kinda forced myself through it so I could get to the next cutscene.  I probably would have liked this more as a visual novel or something.  As it is, I'm pushing blocks every time I close my eyes now.  It's not a bad puzzle game if you're into that, I suppose, but a lot of times it became very frustrating for me.  I don't know if it's just because I'm bad at puzzle games or if it's designed to be particularly sadistic.  It wasn't all that long of a game, so I'll probably play it one more time for the Catherine ending and then move on from the PS3 for good.

[toxicitizen]

1 hour ago, Mister Jack said:

t's not a bad puzzle game if you're into that, I suppose, but a lot of times it became very frustrating for me.  I don't know if it's just because I'm bad at puzzle games or if it's designed to be particularly sadistic.

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.

[toxicitizen]

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...  

[FMW]

Splatoon

That single player mode is pretty rad.  Very Mario Galaxy.  Introduce a central idea for a level, explore it for 4-8 minutes, move on.  Sometimes the idea being explored is "learn your way around this multiplayer map" so that's not as exciting as the actual uniquely designed levels.  But those missions also take 3-4 minutes so whatever, I don't resent them.  The final boss is also pretty rad.  It cheats!  I repeat the pattern to damage him three times, he falls down a pit, I go to the credits.  That's.  The.  Rules.  But this guy, oh nooooo.  He requires FIVE damage instances.  And it gets pretty hard for rounds 4 and 5!

Yoshi's Wooly World

It's not as good as Kirby's Epic Yarn, but that's an unreasonable standard to hold any game to.  Epic Yarn was lightning in a bottle.  Yoshi's Wooly World is pretty good.  It's way over on the Donkey Kong Country end of the platformer spectrum where finding the secrets is actually the entire point to playing the game.  So even though I've now "beaten" Wooly World odds are I'll continue to play it off and on through the next year going back to random levels looking for yarn pills and flowers I had missed.

I kinda wish this game had secret exits like Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze.  When a 2D platformer is all about the secret hunting, it's great to make one of the secret rewards "and now you get a whole new LEVEL!".  Yoshi technically has unlockable levels too, but you get a bonus level for getting every flower in every level for an entire world.  That's a bit of a steeper mountain to climb.

The nice thing about going back to find secrets in Yoshi is that it's easy.  I've never gone back and dug into Tropical Freeze as much as it deserved because it's actually quite hard.  So I can't go back to just chill and look for fun nooks and crannies I missed, it's full on fight for survival even for round 2.

[toxicitizen]

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.

Edited May 21, 2017 by FLD

[Mal]

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd

I think I like this one the best so far. At least we have Cold Steel games coming soon and I cannot wait. Bummer about the school setting but it's more Trails and it's in Erebonia at that. Arguably more interesting than Crossbell but damn did 3rd mention Crossbell a lot.

On 5/17/2017 at 11:59 PM, FLD said:

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.

Very fair assessment. Game play while similar throughout the three games evolves and get rebalanced with each game. While there is one issue (see Falcom thread if you're really curious) I think they got it just right with 3rd. To be sure though, some design choices are kind of bad even if they make in-game sense (it's very Ys like in this regard).

Spoiler

See the Abyss. While you can just use Haze to run through it, it's four repeating floors. Sure, it's pose to be Hell (Gehenna) but it was a slog since I was fighting most things to level up. Good thing I did since I need every little bit of ATK I had in Ries to 200 CP S-Craft the poms. Otherwise I could barely do any damage.

For a Ys equivalent, I heard Celceta was kind of a misstep design wise. There also the end boss of Ys Seven. I haven't beat it yet.

But yeah, even with the gameplay flaws, Trails is easily my favorite turn-based RPG series (there's only so much you can do with a turn-based game). Falcom's Ys series is my favorite action RPG... Falcom is very competent in making games. Like Nintendo but less insane.

Edited May 21, 2017 by Mal

[toxicitizen]

8 minutes ago, Mal said:

 

  Hide contents

See the Abyss. While you can just use Haze to run through it, it's four repeating floors. Sure, it's pose to be Hell (Gehenna) but it was a slog since I was fighting most things to level up. Good thing I did since I need every little bit of ATK I had in Ries to 200 CP S-Craft the poms. Otherwise I could barely do any damage.

For a Ys equivalent, I heard Celceta was kind of a misstep design wise. There also the end boss of Ys Seven. I haven't beat it yet.

 

Yeah, the Abyss was honestly garbage. I mean, dungeon design was never the series' strongest point but that was just lazy and boring. It's mind-boggling to think that this copy paste spiral staircase trash is from the same company that made Xanadu Next. Then there's the fact that you need to do it all in one visit or the fourth fiend doesn't spawn. I lucked out and didn't fuck it up but it was still super tedious.

Celceta is certainly different but I really enjoyed it. I understand the complaints but by the time I was done with it I considered it my favorite Ys game yet, which is definitely an unpopular opinion. I'm glad to be in the minority, though, since Ys VIII seems to be doubling down on everything that made Celceta different.