Games You've Beat 2020

[danielpholt]

Animal Crossing?

 

I did the thing, but obviously I've got no plans to hang up my flimsy axe just yet.

 

 

[TheMightyEthan]

Aha, I have that objective now, but it seems like it'll take a while to get there.

[CorgiShinobi]

DOOM Eternal

 

Finally got around to finishing this one. It's a great game, but I'm not sure how I feel about it overall. DOOM 2016 was such a magnificent game, but there's a clear tonal shift from it and Eternal. The sequel aims to have a more "gamific" approach to progression, combat, and overall presentation. Again, not really a bad thing, but it feels so different from its predecessor. It throws a ton of lore at you, though it's also easy to ignore if that is your prerogative. The game makes it very clear you must swap weapons during combat and must chainsaw lesser enemies should you be running low on ammo. Not to mention the tutorials that pop up to tell you how to deal with most enemy types. In 2016, you could pick your favorites and clean house with them and the chainsaw was rarely used.

 

Still, highly recommend it. While I may not have liked half the aerial platforming, it's a blast to play through and once you've adjusted, you're sure to rip and tear until it is done. Not to mention I do like the implications the story was going with and the overall adventure was massive. Praise the Slayer!

[Mister Jack]

Persona 5 Royal

 

Man, what a game. If you haven't played Persona 5 yet then don't even bother with the vanilla version because this is now the only way to play. I finished with the true ending at just over 107 hours, which is roughly 20 hours more than it took me to beat the first playthrough of the original release. Not only is there an extra semester on the calendar after the original final boss with a new palace, a new FINAL final boss, and multiple new endings, but the whole game has gotten a lot of balance tweaks and quality of life improvements. Guns refill their ammo after every battle now, which is a big game changer since you no longer have to ration a handful of bullets for an entire day. The game is also more generous now with providing ways to restore or save SP, letting you use skills more. Palaces that used to take me two or three days to get through are now possible in just one day thanks to this. Of course, you need the extra free time because now there are two new confidants, another confidant that has been expanded upon, and new side activities. Perhaps the biggest change to combat is the increased viability of status effects and tech hits. Before, these were just a small little damage bonus whenever they happened to pop up, but now they've been buffed so much that they're a vital strategy in battle. In fact, if you put in the effort to level up the newly introduced tech ranking the tech hits can be even stronger than exploiting weaknesses. It adds a whole new layer to combat and it's great. It also helps that the palaces have been remixed to be less repetitive and you now have a grappling hook to help you get around faster.

The new story bits are introduced during the story of the original game and eventually culminate near the end if certain conditions are met. The new party member, Kasumi, is extremely charming and has a really compelling story arc that kept me glued to the controller. The new villain is also pretty interesting. Their motives, methods, and ultimate goal are surprisingly complex and I imagine there are probably some heated discussions in the Persona community surrounding it all. It does feel more like an epilogue, even if the stakes are higher than before, but it's a good epilogue.

 

But fuck all that. MORGANA DOESN'T MAKE YOU GO TO BED ALL THE TIME ANYMORE! Thank god! He still doesn't let you leave the cafe if you spent the afternoon in the metaverse, but at least you can still do things like read books or raise your social stats. You can still do something so it doesn't always feel like your time is being wasted.

 

Persona 5 was my GOTY back in 2017 and if 2020 wasn't such a strong year for games already I'd be tempted to make it my GOTY all over again. It's one of the best JRPGs I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing.

[TheMightyEthan]

On 5/3/2020 at 12:29 AM, Mister Jack said:

But fuck all that. MORGANA DOESN'T MAKE YOU GO TO BED ALL THE TIME ANYMORE! Thank god! He still doesn't let you leave the cafe if you spent the afternoon in the metaverse, but at least you can still do things like read books or raise your social stats. You can still do something so it doesn't always feel like your time is being wasted.

 

Yes! The quality of life enhancements in this version are amazing. I'm glad I already platted base P5, because I don't think I could go back.

[TCP]

Final Fantasy VII Remake

 

What the fuck was that?

[MetalCaveman]

Sunset Overdrive

 

The weapons are fun, the combination with the movement stuff and some of the upgrades and skills you can get make combat an enjoyable thing, that was the best part for me,  grinding on a rail while lightning zaps your enemies and you're firing hair spray cans at them is pretty cool. Unfortunately, there's way too many annoying characters, way too many "defend this place" missions and the meta humour got boring after a while.

[TheMightyEthan]

Ooh, that was a good game. I wish there had been a sequel.

[Mister Jack]

Final Fantasy VII Remake

 

This was pretty great...for the most part. First and foremost, it's kind of surreal that I actually played a Final Fantasy VII remake in the first place. It's like catching a unicorn. Anyway, the new combat system is one of the best in the franchise and I mostly enjoyed the expanded story content they did. Characters like Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie who were pretty minor before have been greatly expanded upon among others and for the most part it works. There are also some new characters who can be kind of hit or miss, but I didn't hate any of them. I think the new stuff is mostly fine except for two things. The first issue is that there's a little too much padding. The side quests are almost all a "go here and kill this" or "go collect these" affair, which isn't very thrilling but you still want to do them for the rewards and extra exp. As for the second issue...

 

Spoiler

Nomura just couldn't contain his addiction to overly complicated anime plots. You would think remaking FF7's story would be a relatively simple affair but now there's all this destiny flavored time janny bullshit which I am just not down with, especially when the ridiculous and over the top ending seems to imply that future parts are going to "change fate" and play out differently than the original game's plot like this is some kind of alternate timeline or something. That's not what I want, god damn it!

 

Still a pretty great and challenging game and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. Maybe I'll go back later to replay optional stuff I didn't get around to, but for now I'm moving on to Yakuza 3.

 

Edited May 22, 2020 by Mister Jack

[TheMightyEthan]

Personal 5 Royal

 

 

Oh man, it was so good. They made so many quality of life changes to the base game that just make it so much nicer to play. The pacing is slightly weird around what would have been the end of the base game, where the third semester starts, because the setup to that point is pretty much the same as in the original, but after a few in-game days it catches its stride and gets the flow back.

 

5/5

 

I do wish it had been sold as DLC for the base game though, in addition to being sold as its own thing.

[TheMightyEthan]

 

Beat Control's first expansion, the Foundation. It was a nice follow-up to the base game, and took me about 5.5 hours to beat so not a bad chunk of content. Looking forward to the next one.

[Mal]

Helltaker has the right idea of gathering a harem of demon. He's also my spirit animal with making pancakes.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Mal

[TheMightyEthan]

That looks... interesting...

[Mister Jack]

Yakuza 3

 

So the first to get out of the way is to point out that this is NOT a Kiwami style remake. This is pretty much the original game as it was released except with updated textures and a new localization. As such, well, there's just no way around it. The gameplay is outdated. Really outdated. Only one martial arts style that feels pretty limited, unskippable cutscenes that you can't even pause unless you hit the PS button, an inferior hostess club side quest, a lack of interesting games to play at Club Sega, and on top of all that there isn't even a run button this time around. You get a second city to play around in with Okinawa in addition to Kamurocho, but the truth is that Okinawa just isn't all that interesting. There's a lot working against this game in 2020.

 

Thankfully, this is a game that's salvaged by its story. The crime drama that's at play here, while not as compelling as 0, Kiwami, or Kiwami 2 in my personal opinion, is still interesting enough that I wanted to keep going to the end. Even a lesser Yakuza plot is still going to be about ten times better than the plot of most games out there. However, I do take issue with the pacing. While the yakuza drama is good once it gets going, it takes its sweet time getting there. Kiryu spends roughly a third of the game just dicking about at an orphanage in Okinawa with very little actual yakuza stuff involved. You're mostly taking care of these orphans and helping them with their problems, and while I do see the appeal in showing Kiryu's softer side and the importance of fleshing out his family I still feel like a little too much time was spent on these kids. Fortunately, the backwater yakuza family in Okinawa happens to be pretty likable and I think they were pretty good additions to the franchise.

 

I'm not gonna lie, I doubt I'll go back to this one anytime soon. I didn't hate it but out of all the Yakuza games I've played so far this one is easily the weakest entry. Maybe that's unfair to say when the other games I've played were made with modern design sensibilities in mind, but it is what it is. Still, I bought the remastered trilogy as a bundle so I figured I might as well play through all of them. Even if you plan on buying them digitally, I still don't know that I would recommend skipping this one because then you'll be missing a huge chunk of the overall plot. If you want to play the complete Kiryu saga then I would say just go ahead and get this one and blaze through the main story missions quickly before moving on to Yakuza 4.

[TheMightyEthan]

If, hypothetically, someone had never played a Yakuza game before, but were kind of interested in trying them, what game should they start with would you say?

[Mister Jack]

Start with 0. It's the best in the series and also the first chronological chapter. Even if you decide not to continue after you finish it, it's still a great game all on its own.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Mister Jack

[MetalCaveman]

Gears 5

 

It's... Gears of War, if you liked the previous ones, you'll like this one, probably.  It's for the most part the same game, though there are some new things that I enjoyed.

 

First was the open world stuff, there's two open areas in the game, and while I enjoyed the first one way more, it was cool to see an open world(ish) game not have the map covered in a trillion icons/things to do/collectibles/etc. The side quests were short and to the point, and you didn't have to spend hours listening to NPCs, just go here, do the thing, done.

 

The second thing is Jack, your robot friend that now has a lot more skills, which change the way the game plays quite a bit, my favourites were Stim, which gives you a temporary shield and revives fallen allies, and flash, which blinds enemies until you get the special upgrade, where it freezes enemies and that one is super useful for heavy enemies and bosses. There's also invisibility, shock mines, a shield which deflects bullets, and one that allows you to take control of some enemies. All in all, this was the biggest change and my favourite.  

 

Storywise though, it felt a bit weak. A lot of the character moments fell flat for me, specially with certain things

 

Spoiler

JD's journey of chill dude->psycho killer->obedient soldier->chill dude is weird and jumps from one state to another too fast.

 

Also characters going "Man, why did JD change so much, why'd he push us away?"

 

After they were the ones who told him to fuck off is pretty funny.  

 

All in all, I cared more about Jack's sacrifice than most of the other stuff.

 

Fahz was cool though, he should be the main character next.  

 

 

Even that thing at the end:

Spoiler

They set the game so that you'll choose to save Del because he's spent the whole game with you, but that's exactly why I chose to save JD, I felt he hadn't a chance to really show what had happened back then and after the hammer of dawn incident. However, the whole thing still seemed like there was an obvious third choice of "Just throw a knife at the queen's face".

 

It also sets up

 

Spoiler

Gears of War, literally, we're back at the start, with the locust having a new queen, humanity pushed to the brink of extinction, etc.

 

At this point, I'd expect Gears 6 to start with Kait in a jail cell, and then JD/Del arrives to get her out of there, so they can fight the locust and she goes "Shit"

 

 

All in all it was enjoyable, though I'm certainly glad I played it through game pass, had I spent money buying it I may not be as happy with it.  

[TheMightyEthan]

Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan

 

It was decent. I managed to make it through with only one character dying, and that one died because of something I did that I should have known would kill them. I liked how much shorter it was than Until Dawn, but I didn't like the setup as much as that one. The biggest problem though is there was basically no falling action, and not even really a climax, we just suddenly escaped, the end. It felt super abrupt and unsatisfying. There really wasn't even any ending cutscenes to kind of give that sense of resolution to the characters.

 

The other thing I didn't like, and this is a huge spoiler, is 

Spoiler

that the mysterious stuff happening was actually hallucinogens rather than something supernatural. I saw it coming a ways out, but it still disappointed me. I prefer my horror to be supernatural, dammit!

That's just my own personal preference though, nothing I could say the game actually did wrong.

 

Overall I'd give it a 3/5.

 

The trailer for the next one looks more promising though.

[Mister Jack]

Yakuza 4

 

This one was better than Yakuza 3. The plot has better pacing, but it ties all the way back to Yakuza 0 so if you're not paying attention it can be easy to get lost. There are also some retcons in here that not everyone is going to like but that's a matter of opinion. Regardless, you don't spend 33% of the game at an orphanage. In fact, in addition to Kiryu you are now also playing as three other characters. There's Akiyama the loan shark, Saejima the convict, and Tanimura the cop. They all have different fighting styles and storylines that eventually intertwine near the end, and just as you start to get tired of playing one character it switches you to another. Some people might not like having to play as people besides Kiryu but I found these characters to be likable and well-written. Tanimura is maybe the weakest of the four, but not by a huge margin and only because cop stories aren't as interesting as Yakuza stories to me. The gameplay outside of that hasn't changed a whole lot so I don't have much else to say about it. I'd rank it above 3 but maybe not quite up there with Kiwami.

[TheMightyEthan]

Halo 2 Anniversary PC

 

Halo 2 was always my least favorite of the Bungie Halo games, but it's actually better than I remembered it. I was posting on Twitter and Discord about how the Arbiter missions aren't good, but really it's only the first one. The ending is still absolutely horrible on its own, but obviously the blow is lessened substantially now by the existence of Halo 3 and the knowledge that I won't have to wait years and years to finish the game.

 

Anyway, I don't actually know how to assign this a star rating, since it's got so much tied up with it, so instead I will just post my ranking of the Halo series:

 

After several minutes of trying I've learned that's impossible too, so instead I will just say that I no longer consider this game worse than the other Bungie Halos (again, other than the ending). They all have their individual upsides and downsides, and this definitely fits in with the rest.

[Mister Jack]

Yakuza 5

 

I'd say this one is probably the best game in the remastered collection and I can see why this was the only one to get a special PS3 case. There are now five playable characters, although one of them doesn't do any actual fighting and is instead used for an idol based rhythm game. You may ask what japanese idols have to do with the yakuza, but that all gets explained. Actually, this game probably has the most complicated plot in the series. In addition to having more playable characters than ever there are also five cities this time around scattered all over Japan and all of them have their own side plot but are also relevant to the larger plot overall. It's a lot to swallow and if you haven't kept up with all the previous entries you'll probably get hopelessly lost. This is not a series where you can just skip entries and expect to keep up. Story aside, this entry has by far the most amount of side content to amuse yourself with, including activities that aren't available in any other Yakuza game. If you want a Yakuza game chock full of stuff to do, this is the one for you. Still, while this is the best of the remastered collection I would probably still put it below the Kiwami style games, which just feel better to play. Like I said before, this collection is not a series of remakes. They're simply remasters, which means they don't have all the gameplay improvements of the Kiwami games. For 20 dollars per game, however, you really can't complain too much. I'm glad I played these and I enjoyed experiencing the missing chapters in the Kiryu saga, even if they got completely bonkers at some points.

[MetalCaveman]

Darksiders 3

 

I said I was going to skip this, but it was better to just finish it with Game Pass than trying to buy it. Sad really, I love the other two games (haven't played Genesis) but this one has too much going against it.

 

The Darksiders games have always taken inspiration, and sometimes just outright copy other games, 3 tries to copy the Souls games, in the worst possible way, without paying attention to the details and the balance that makes the Souls games work. The way combat works, with the camera angle issues, enemies attacking you from off-screen, enemies constantly blocking, ranged attacks, enemies that teleport, etc. and the way levelling works meant that I had to tone down the difficulty a fair bit, and even then, there were several instances of frustrating encounters due to the issues I've mentioned. When you die you lose your 'souls' and have to go back and recover them, and trust me, you'll die a bunch, couple that with some extremely long loading times and it increases the frustration a fair bit.

 

Levelling up anything other than arcane feels like a waste of points, as most boss fights sort of just devolve into bait attack-dodge-arcane counter-rinse-repeat. Any attempt at a proper fight usually ends with you dying. Points into health can be useful depending on which difficulty you play in, strength feels kinda useless as most of the damage output increases come from upgrading weapons.

 

The worse part for me was this area that has a constant environmental hazard that insta-kills you if it gets too close, I died so many times there I thought about dropping the game entirely.

 

Another problem I had, though I admit this it 100% me being dumb, is the puzzles, too many times I had to look up guides because I couldn't figure out how to solve a certain section.

 

Speaking of guides, I missed the true ending because there's a boss that, for how much it gets mentioned in the story by a main character, and how it gets mentioned, I was sure it would be the final boss, or close to it, turns out it's an entirely missable fight that's hidden in the most annoying area of the game. I looked it up and found that there's some interesting stuff in the true ending, but not enough for it to be worth another playthrough.

 

With some more polish, a more consistent combat system, manual saves, and a map this game would have been pretty cool. The Hollows system is cool though, I liked that part.  

 

In terms of story, for the most part, you've seen the important stuff if you're played the other games.

 

Spoiler

Humanity is supposed to be toast, completely gone, in 2 you sort of "save" them depending on your choices, but in here, there's a bunch of humans alive and they all teleport somewhere else with Fury as their guardian.

 

Fury starts out prideful, cocky, and hating her brothers, after a single boss fight she changes tune completely. Kinda weird, but OK, I can take it, given what that fight was.

 

She's now lost her horse though, and I'm pretty sure you can't just get a new one just like that.

 

The thing you get if you get the true ending, will it play a role in 4? What is it? Why is the council afraid of it?

 

What's going to happen to the humans Fury is supposed to be protecting after she gets called when War breaks the Seventh Seal?

 

 

All in all, the weakest in the series for me. I would only recommend it if you're a hardcore Darksiders fan and want to play every game, and even then, only if it was on sale, or through game pass.

[deanb]

Agent A

 

Got this ages ago, either super cheap or free on Android (heck even "super cheap" is free with the Rewards credit I get). It was okay in the visuals department, but honestly on the puzzle front it kind of sucked. A lot of the "puzzles" were collecting things and in some cases those could be like a tile hidden behind a rock that you're able to easily miss. And many were number based that weren't much of a puzzle just having to remember a long-string number. So in one case you had to order a hacking drive off a spy catalogue, so you had to remember the phone number for the company, and the agents account code (which iirc was 12 digits). And the phone, phone number, and account number were all in three separate areas. And it's randomised, so you can't check a guide to remember the number you've got to record it in some way (I ended up taking screenshots n switching between apps, no idea what you'd do on a Switch). Some puzzles were number substitution so not only did you have to remember the symbols, but then convert them to numbers (which in some cases are double digit; just to add extra stupid layer of complexity), but then remember the numbers to take back to the input.

 

But yeah, remembering a 10-digit code from one area to a completely different area isn't really a "puzzle". That's just "remembering someones phone number" and I'm on a phone that does that for me.

[TheMightyEthan]

@MetalCaveman Man, I really liked the first two Darksiders, but you're sure making me glad I never played 3.

 

@deanb Yeah, any time a game requires me to remember something like that I always just take a screenshot. That's what I had to do with the safe codes in Persona 5.

[Mister Jack]

Yakuza 6: Song of Life

 

The final chapter in Kiryu's story is a controversial one, and I sorta understand why. After Yakuza 5 expanded everything with more characters, more side activities, bigger stakes, and pretty much just more everything, Yakuza 6 scales it back quite a bit. You only play as Kiryu again and instead of five cities you have two now: Kamurocho and Hiroshima. The plot is also far more personal to Kiryu now and the Tojo clan itself actually plays a fairly minor role in this story. Kiryu is no longer concerned about the Tojo clan whatsoever and all he cares about anymore is protecting his family. While I can sympathize with people who may have been disappointed by this because they wanted a big, explosive grand finale, I actually don't mind a smaller, more intimate storyline and think it's rather appropriate. Kiryu is getting on in years by now and he can't keep doing this forever. He's tired of being pulled back into the yakuza life and he just wants to put it all behind him and retire with his kids, but his shady past has come back to haunt him by directly putting his loved ones in the crosshairs and he's forced to take care of business one last time. While this entry still has plenty of humor and silliness, you get a real sense of fatigue from Kiryu. He's just so done with this shit. On a side note, Beat Takeshi of all people plays a major role in this game. You know, that guy who designed one of the most frustrating video games of all time because he hates video games and wanted to give a middle finger to the people who play them. I dunno how Sega got him to agree to this, but he does a pretty great job.

The gameplay hasn't changed all that much, but the biggest addition seems to be a new RTS style minigame based around building up your own clan and pitting them against other clans. I only did a few of these matches myself so I don't have a lot to say about it. It's there if you want something to kill time with, I suppose, and I think it also can be played online so that's cool, but I was never really big on the RTS genre.

 

It's kind of bittersweet to say goodbye to Kiryu. This entry definitively closes the book on his saga, but I think that's fine. Some people are pissed that the next game switches protagonists and has changed to an RPG, but Kiryu has suffered enough. If he came back as the protagonist it would be a total copout after the way they wrapped up this game. After playing 7 brawler games I'm also not opposed to the Yakuza team trying a new genre either. What I've seen of Yakuza 7 so far looks pretty cool and I'm looking forward to revisiting this franchise in Ichiban's shoes.