Super Games You Beat in 2024 Turbo Thread: Arcade Edition

[MetalCaveman]

Palworld

 

First things first, I played a version I stumbled upon while sailing the high seas lol.

 

That out of the way, I was super surprised with this game, first of all, this is more Ark than Pokémon. Normally, I'm not a fan of crafting/survival games, too much resource management, too much not being able to do fun stuff because you have to build or gather resources, too much worrying about your character's food/water/whatever, etc.

 

This manages to do away with most of that... For a while at least.

 

Pals are able to gather stuff, move it around and even help you build and craft things, on top of that, early resources, like stone and wood can be obtained from structures you can build, as opposed to constantly having to look for them around the world.

 

You can also get some items which help with your character's food needs, all you need is to have something in there and automatically, your character and pals in your party will eat when needed, no need to worry about water or sleep either.

 

You can even build bases where pals handle pretty much everything, all you have to do is occasionally pop in and select a crafting recipe, then go on your way as your pals handle the rest, you get a notification when the stuff you wanted done is completed.

 

Eventually however, you do reach a point where the usual issues pop up, gathering late/end-game resources takes forever, building certain items takes a ton of resources, some stuff can't be efficiently farmed, certain resources are better bought than farmed, but that takes a bunch of gold, though there are some relatively easy ways to deal this, crafting nails and selling them makes you a decent amount of money.

 

This is where custom settings can help, a really neat thing, you can change a ton of things, like XP multipliers, catch rate, pal spawns, day/night duration, player damage, pal damage, stamina usage, you can even disable raids, which can be annoying in the early game.

 

All of this is of course, just part of the game, the other part is the pal catching and collecting. I was also pretty surprised with this. Yes, as has been mentioned many of the pal designs are pretty much just Pokémon with some slight changes, as well as some that, like chikipi, are just a chicken, or other animal lol. That said, I think that's precisely why this works, I've seen some other creature collecting games being mentioned, but this is one of the few with creature designs that I actually like, they're fun, cute and cool, in ways that IMO, only Pokémon and Digimon have been able to manage.

 

In fact, unlike every Pokémon game, this is the first time I actually give nicknames to my main party.

 

Spoiler

Alien Waifu Luna (Lunaris)

Cat Waifu Kat (Katress)

CFA-44 (Jetragon) this one is from my favourite craft in Ace Combat lol

Lux Aeterna (Mossanda Lux)

Dethorse (Necromus)

 

Being able to actually fight alongside them was also pretty neat.

 

While the trailers and discussion were all about "Pokémon with guns! Enslave pals and force them to work until they die! Have them live in miserable conditions as you build your empire!" I found that this is up to the player entirely. Yes, you can overwork your pals and force them to make stuff for you, or you can treat them with care.

 

I built high quality beds, hot springs and made the best food for my pals before I even had a bed lol.

 

That said, there are some issues. Some to do with the early access nature of the game, others to do with some design choices.

 

Pals have some serious AI issues, they'll get stuck on stuff all the time, sometimes you'll fast travel back to your base and find one of your pals is hanging out on the roof of your house, how they get there? Who knows lol. Other times they'll just stay in one corner, unable to do anything, getting stressed and hungry because they can't find their way out. You'll find them sleeping on top of furnaces, crafting tables and other areas instead of their beds.

 

There's no easy way to set them to a specific task too, some pals have different abilities, like mining, crafting, kindling, etc. And there's no easy way to tell them "hey, mine this thing" instead, they'll just sorta do whatever. You can, in theory, lift a pal and carry it to the thing you want it to do, but this is janky as hell.

 

Building is also a nightmare, there's so many issues and things that don't make sense. Stairs can't be connected to anything, some platforms will whine about "not being connected" or "not being on the ground" until you angle the cursor just the right way for it to work, no easy way to build certain things, placing down your base marker makes it impossible to build certain things around it. On a more personal nitpick, I wish metal structures were less industrial/prison style and more along the lines of the pal armour you can get. Maybe allow you to choose which you want, a prison, or a Star Trek style future city.

 

Bosses also have a ridiculous amount of HP, def feels like they're made with 4 player co-op in mind.

 

I enjoyed my time with it, and hope that more devs will try and make fun creature collecting games like this, with creature designs that actually make you want to capture, raise, care for and battle alongside them, wouldn't mind doing away with the survival crafting stuff though.

 

TL;DR: It can be summed up with this exchange between Josh and Cotton from RageGamingVideos:

 

Josh "I can't get over how well made this game is, I was convinced it would just be a giant meme"

Cotton "I think it still is, but it can also be good"

Josh "It's a well made giant meme"

 

Grade: A

[Mister Jack]

I really do like Palworld and I hate that the discourse around it is mostly whether or not they plagiarized. I freely admit that some of the designs really skirt the line as close as they can without getting in trouble, but I'd rather have something derivative than ugly. I remember when TemTem was a thing. The monsters in that had their own unique style but that style was so hideous that I had no desire whatsoever to catch them, let alone raise them. Besides, once you strip away the surface level visual comparisons the fact is that Palworld and Pokemon are almost nothing alike aside from using balls to catch monsters. This is a dev team that literally had to learn how to make the game as they went along and it bums me out that they're being vilified rather than celebrated. At least their game is a huge success.

[TCP]

Metroid Fusion

I never hear anyone talk about this game (compared to the other Metroid games that is) but I think it's one of the better ones. I imagine people have issues with the robo telling you where to go, but there's so much reward for exploring that it makes up for it. And honestly, I like that I didn't always have to figure out where to go. 

The boss fights were great. There is a lot of modernized Metroid in it, like Samus holding onto edges. Each area was varied. I liked the super missiles just being an upgrade to the regular missiles instead of their own separate weapon. The moments when you randomly (sometimes literally) walk into SA-X. 

But most of all I liked the pixel artwork. This game looks GREAT. I wish Nintendo would still make the occasional pixel based game. There's some great moments like when you walk past windows and see the planet below floating past. The game is very colourful especially coming from Zero Mission and Super, which makes the image really pop on the Analogue Pocket screen. 

Grade: A

Edited February 12 by TCP

[MetalCaveman]

Borderlands GOTY Enhanced

 

Thanks to the movie trailer, I thought I'd go back to this series lol.

 

Been a while since I played this one, and I never did get around to the DLC so this was my first time going through it (sorta, I did start Zombie Island once lol), base game is still fun, though BL2 definitively improves on a bunch of stuff. Thought about completing all missions but I couldn't be bothered to deal with Crazy Earl, dude makes me wish we could just go full bandit on him lol. Specially his first mission, "I have enough weapons and ammo to blow up this entire planet, why can't I just bust open the door and get the thing I need? Why do I have to go around doing stuff for this asshole?!"

 

Enhanced edition adds golden chests and shift keys, which give some decent loot. It does have a memory leak issue when playing cutscenes though, so if you're playing through the story you'll have to quit and restart the game a couple of times.

 

DLC was OK, Zombie Island has some fun things, but the whole "we're poking fun at this trope while also engaging in it" gets annoying quick, it really likes making you fight waves of zombies while waiting for an elevator/bridge/transport. Armoury had a cool concept but the execution fell short IMO, new vehicles were cool, but the fact that after setting up the armoury thing and telling you you'd get all the stuff there, it only gives you a couple of minutes before everything is destroyed really drags this DLC down. Never went against the secret boss, it was lvl 61 and I was lvl 40 at the time, no point in trying lol. Robolution could've been better, bringing back old bosses as Claptrap versions was a good idea but I feel they could have done more with it instead of just "fight boss again, now fight them again again", Knoxx was the best part of it though, dude just can't get a break. Moxxi DLC is just an arena thing, fight waves of enemies, get a reward, you don't get any XP from enemies though, so not that worth it.

 

All DLCs have some serious issues though, first is the collect-a-thon missions, all DLCs have one, and the thing is, even if you collect a bunch of whatever item it asks of you, it doesn't actually count towards the mission until you unlock it, or unlock its next tier depending on how far you are. In Zombie Island, zombies drop brains, which you get a mission to collect, even if you already have a 100 of them, by the time you start the mission it's back to 0 and you have to collect them all again. At least the cores in the Armoury DLC give you a buff when collecting them so there's a reason to pick them up, Zombie Island and Robolution stuff doesn't really do anything lol. I didn't bother with these missions, too long and too annoying. The next issue is that none of the DLCs have fast travel, so you have to walk/drive to and from each area each time. Zombie Island is somewhat small and there's shortcuts you can open so it's not as bad, but Robolution and specially Armoury are incredibly annoying to move through. If they had a couple of fast travel points I might have gone for all missions, but I got tired of going back through each area several times so in the end I just did the story missions lol.

 

Moxxi's is the only DLC without this fast travel issue, because it's just one room with doors that take you to each of the arenas, so fast travel isn't necessary.

 

Grade: B+

[toxicitizen]

Persona 3 Reload

 

This was pretty much exactly what I wanted for Persona 3, especially now that we're getting The Answer as DLC. It's Persona 3 with all the content from FES but without the compromises of Portable. One of the things that bugged me about Portable was the lack of animated cutscenes but Reload actually has less of those than FES. A lot of what were originally animated scenes have been replaced by in-engine cutscenes like in Persona 5, and tbh I think that those just work way better. Keep the anime scenes for special moments that can't easily be done in-engine. So yeah, beyond just being the definitive release of P3 content-wise, I also actually found it to be an improvement overall in terms of presentation. It sucks for those that wanted FeMC but I can't say I personally give a shit about that. And at least P3P is now available on modern platforms if I ever feel like giving that a shot. Back when the port seemed like it was all we were gonna get, I was disappointed that we got P3P over FES. But now that P3R is a thing, porting P3P was the right call.

 

But yeah, this is definitely still Persona 3. For better and for worse. While they've added a few things to make it more interesting, Tartarus is still Tartarus. And some of the social links felt kinda weird because the best answers (as in actually trying to help these people) weren't always the ones that gave the most points. It kinda makes the MC seem like an asshole yes man that just tells people what they want to hear, even if it's terrible advice. The game's flaws stand out way more after having recently replayed P4G and finally played P5R. I'll give it this, though. It doesn't overstay its welcome.

 

This has to be the fastest I've gone through a mainline Persona game. I actually made it to the end of the calendar like two weeks ago and only had a few days to get through before going to fight the final boss. I spent some time finishing quests and fusing better personas, but once I realized that the Reaper is way harder in this than he was in Persona 5 I couldn't decide if I wanted to grind or just save him for NG+. And then SF6 decided this was a perfect time to finally release a new character that I thought looked cool, so I went an entire week without touching P3. Anyway, I'm gonna have to do another run regardless because I couldn't max out all the social links in my playthrough. I came super close and only had one missing (Aigis) but I ended up being a few days short.

 

Back in the day, I remember thinking the story in Persona 3 was better than the one in Persona 4 and I'm not sure i feel that way anymore. Replaying P3 after all these years was kinda weird. I still really dig the gloomy end of the world vibes it has going but the plot itself isn't particularly well paced or told. I think I still like some elements of Persona 3 more but the overall storytelling is unarguably improved in P4 and P5.

 

And speaking of P4, I imagine a remake of that is a sure thing now that P3R is Atlus' fastest-selling game ever. Which is good because it would be awkward to have P4 being the only one still stuck with blocky PS2 graphics. So yeah, this was a fun one to revisit and I'm really happy to finally have a definitive version of the game.

[MetalCaveman]

Borderlands 2

 

In terms of gameplay, way better than the first, the story has some issues though. My main gripe is that your character is pretty much non-existent during most story sections, there's a couple of times were the vault hunter is mentioned but other than that you don't really interact with anyone beyond being told "go here, do thing, come back/go somewhere else" and yet the game acts as though the people of Sanctuary are your best friends, brothers and sisters in arms, people you would move heaven and earth and hell and pandora to help. A couple of voice lines or missions like the Claptrap birthday party for the other characters would have gone a long way to improve this IMO.

 

"We must get you to your friends!"

"Your friends need you!"

"I will kill your friends!"

 

Meanwhile I just imagine my character being all "My interactions with these people have been limited to being told where to go, what to kill and where to claim my reward, I would hardly call that friendship, but yeah, OK, as long as I get paid I'll call them whatever you want" .

 

Handsome Jack was a cool villain, in a "I hate this guy and would have liked to follow Brick's plan instead of just ending it with a slap" kind of way.

 

Also finished the Tiny Tina D&D DLC, that was fun.

 

Everyone: "Let's talk to this dude"

Brick: "I punch him!"

 

The ending gave much more depth to Tina's character too, that was really bittersweet.

[Mister Jack]

Pseudoregalia

 

This is a 5 dollar 3D platformer Metroidvania on steam, a genre I did not realize we needed more of. I beat it in about 6 hours, although at least two of them were due to me getting lost and not knowing where to go. It's not very linear so it's easy to find yourself not knowing where to go next if you haven't been paying close attention to your progress. Still, these might be the smoothest controls I've ever experienced on a 3D platformer. Mario himself couldn't do better. This game is more of a proof of concept than a full-fledged title but if they ever make a sequel it could really be something fantastic. 

[TheMightyEthan]

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

 

This game is so good, even though it does have a few bits of filler that I think could have been cut out, and one particular dungeon that I hate with a burning passion, but overall I was super happy with it, and I can't wait for the next one.

 

Grade: A+

[TCP]

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

 

This game fucking slaps. I was skeptical, Remake was "just ok". But goddamn I loved this game. It's my favourite Final Fantasy. Hopefully we don't have to wait 4 years for Remembrance... or whatever it will be called.

 

Grade: A++

[Mister Jack]

So what makes this one so much better than the last one?

[TheMightyEthan]

The big things are that the world is much expanded upon, it's a lot less linear, and you have more interaction with your party.

[TCP]

Remake felt like a tech demo for Rebirth. There's significantly more to do in Rebirth, side content, main story, areas to explore. And almost all of it is great. There's a bunch of mini games in there that could be there own game. I heard a podcast today where one person said "Rebirth is one of the best games I've ever played", and another person responded "Rebirth is two of the best games I've ever played, Rebirth and Queen's Blood". 

But also:

Rebirth is the best mini game collection disguised a semi-open world RPG.

[toxicitizen]

1 hour ago, TCP said:

Remake felt like a tech demo for Rebirth.

 

It felt like a tech demo for a game that didn't exist yet?!

 

Kidding aside, I really enjoyed FFVII Remake but I did find it funny that it was praised to the high heavens because it reminded me of FFXIII a lot and that game was fucking reviled. I guess people are more willing to run along linear corridors when heavy doses of nostalgia are involved.

[TCP]

"Rebirth makes Remake feel like a tech demo" is that better?? or "Rebirth retroactively makes Remake feel like a tech demo"?? 

At some point in the next year or two Square will rerelease XIII (I think it's the only game currently not really available except maybe via an old PC port and Xbox BC) and I feel we'll see a lot of people come out of the woodwork to sing it's praises. Basically, it's going to get some Star Wars prequel revisionism.

[MetalCaveman]

Maid of the Dead

 

Vampire Survivors, but with maids and zombies.

 

Gameplay is fun, each character has their own unique weapon (melee and ranged) and their own skills, they also have a sub-skill triggered every five levels, some increase damage, others restore HP, there's a decent amount of variety in their setups, though the best one IMO is Otoha, her gun takes a while to fire, but it fires the most bullets out of all the characters, her melee also hits twice and covers all angles, perfect for when zombies surround you.

 

The story is OK, basically Resident Evil if Spencer was into maid cafes and Wesker was a hot anime lady. Zombie virus is discovered, scientist lady wants to use it to cure people, even "curing" death, then evil scientist lady discovers that some of the infected don't turn into monsters, but instead gain superhuman strength and healing powers, decides to create stronger version of virus and create a new world for the "ascended", virus gets released, everything goes to hell, the usual stuff.

 

Overall a fun game, just wish there was a more infinite survival mode as opposed to the 30 minute one that's currently available, there's also some translation issues, specially with weapon upgrades, there's one stat that's called "auto aim" but upgrading it does nothing for aiming, instead it increases the amount of bullets fired each attack. There's also a couple of typos here and there, but nothing too bad. Being a qureate game, the art is obviously most excellent. \m/ \m/

 

Grade: A+

[TCP]

Final Fantasy VI

I've started this game many times but never completed it until now. Looks and plays great on the Steam Deck with the Pixel Remaster.

It's a classic for a reason, just a really great 2D JRPG. I can only imagine how great it would have felt in 1994, but it holds up in 2024. Fun fact: coincidentally, I learned earlier today that today, April 2, is the 30th anniversary of the game! I saved last night right before the Kefka boss fight and saw something today about it being the 30th anniversary. Clearly, it was meant to be.

One other thing: this game needs the HD-2D treatment. Expand the script a bit, make some areas bigger, but keep the ~vibes~

Rating: A+

[TheFlyingGerbil]

I finished Assassin's Creed Valhalla. 100% progress, but not 100% complete. Thought the story ended rather abruptly and in fact hadn't realised I'd finished it. Especially with the random extra bits they kept throwing in like the elton john farewell tour. Completed a lot of the mysteries, artefacts and wealths as I was travelling around but didn't feel the need to carry on after I was done with the story. I did 100% the additional areas, and had the ultimate edition so there were a few.  Think I got the balance right this time between story and extras, without getting burnout. Not sure if it was the game or me, but that was a problem for the last few AC games for me.

 

Obviously there were recognisable town names but was pretty cool seeing local landmarks like the stiperstones and mitchell's fold, which I've walked along though it was a rather fanciful rendition of the area. ALso enjoyed seeing the welsh story line, but was a shame I was on the wrong side of that story. Will look forward to playing Mirage though do not feel in a rush to do so.

[toxicitizen]

45 minutes ago, TheFlyingGerbil said:

Especially with the random extra bits they kept throwing in like the elton john farewell tour.

 

the what now

[TheFlyingGerbil]

20 hours ago, toxicitizen said:

 

the what now

 

 

The outfit they put you in was so iridescent and ostentatious it was really distracting and it was only four unnecessary one minute cut scenes that spent longer getting to/loading than the scenes themselves.

[MetalCaveman]

Borderlands 3

 

This was a thing lol.

 

Best gameplay of the series, best weapon designs, best environments, best graphics... The absolute worst story and characters.

 

The gameplay has been improved, movement in particular, you can now slide, climb over obstacles and there's even a stomp attack. Weapon designs are a cool continuation from 2, where each manufacturer has their own unique style, but this time there's also a ton of new weapons, even normal ones look really cool, you'll find rifles that look like someone shoved a pistol grip up the butt of some weird alien monster, one of my favourites was an Atlas rifle that looks like a spaceship. All of the guns look cool this time around. I loved this Tediore SMG that when reloaded transformed into a brain with robot legs that was also a turret. However, my favourite guns were the Jakobs, there's something about running around a spaceship wielding a revolver that looks straight out of a western.

 

The environments were also a huge improvement, there's now multiple planets, each with their own style, Eden-6 is a jungle planet, forgot the name of it, but the Atlas planet is a more urban place, Pandora is still Pandora.

 

Having played the other two recently, I was actually really surprised by how good it looks, OG Borderlands still holds up thanks to the art style, but even then, this looks so much better in pretty much every way, except for some character faces which look a bit weird, like they're disproportionate to their bodies. Everything else though, looks great.

 

The story however, is where it all falls apart. The main antagonists are just lame, Handsome Jack could be annoying as hell, but he also was the kind of villain that made you take him seriously, sure he's mocking and taunting you for a good chunk of the game, but it's also clear that when push comes to shove, he's someone you don't want to underestimate. The twins however, were just... lame. Their jokes are lame, their whole streamer thing comes across as a very "how do you do fellow kids" kind of thing, even when facing them they never felt like a real threat.

 

Spoiler

Sirens are supposed to be extremely rare, extremely powerful beings, only 6 of them existing in the galaxy at the same time, and yet we have five* of them here at the same time lol.

 

*Four and a half? Does Troy count as a full Siren?

 

The Maliwan vs Atlas thing was so much better, and it would have been cool to have that be the main plot.

 

Maliwan is trying to take over Atlas and destroy Jakobs (maybe throw in Torgue as well, just for funsies lol), they create the characters of Troy and Tyreen as a way to get a huge army of easily disposable units, that could also distract the vault hunters while the main Maliwan force deals with Atlas and Jakobs. The Eden 6 story already set up how they could do that, Hammerlock's sister uses nanotechnology as her weapon and Troy asks her if she's also a siren.

 

There was also the sibling rivalry thing that could have led to some interesting things but ultimately goes nowhere, and don't even get me started on Ava lol.

 

Wouldn't be surprised if Borderlands 4 opened with "And then Ava got everyone killed, so here's some new characters!"

 

There were however, some things I did enjoy.

 

Balex and Clay are awesome,

Spoiler

Jakobs wanting to enjoy the puzzles while Hammerlock wanted him to hurry up was funny

and though it was just a still during the credits,

Spoiler

Wainwright proposing to Hammerlock, Jakobs style, with an engraved revolver,

was really cool.

 

TL;DR: Great gameplay, terrible story.

 

Grade: B-

[deanb]

Star Wars: Jedi Survivor

 

Got it for cheap in the recent Amazon sale. Rather enjoyed it, and liked some of the new traversal elements (even if I think some is a bit sus from a lore perspective :P).

I did have a quibble with a particular boss battle and ended up (after some raging on Twitter) dropping down to padawan mode to get past it. I'm also confused on some character motivations too. Kinda looking forward to Outlaws (though I know it's different studio and so on).

 

Spoiler

So the boss fight that annoyed was Cere vs Vader. I already knew the outcome as some folks online aren't exactly subtle. I kinda disliked it given it was a pretty challenging fight anyway, but you're tied to a character you've only played for a short while so are lacking any upgrades or fighting stances you've unlocked in the main game and so far it had made you pretty OP against enemies so you'd not really had a chance to properly flex and practice with her combat. It also sucked that the choke was unblockable/undodgeable and if it caught you and you weren't above 2/3 health you were fucked and had to start the battle over again.

 

Motivation wise I don't get why Bode was against you. You both wanted the compass in order to hide people from the empire - he could easily have joined the hidden path folk to be on Tanalorr with his daughter (his daughter who seems to bear no resentment to you for hunting down her dad, twice, and eventually shooting him, twice). Might want to run a sith test on her. And lore wise we know this has to lead to a dead end as we know from the filma there was no secret hidden planet with a jedi temple on it full of trained jedi (it would have made a fine place for Luke to set up if it was around). Like at some point Cal is dying too.

 

Also you spend ages trying to hunt a working compass and then it's like "oh btw the stations you've been at, and the alignment room you will have stumbled across in the early hours, are able to open the way too".

 

Also what were you doing at the start? Did some mission that went pete tong, had a brief hiding out at Koboh where you accidentally fall down a mine shaft to stumble across zee and leads to a merry chase, meanwhile you can go back to Corascant but only to mop up collectibles, and Saw never once chimes in to go "yo I sent you on a mission and you seem to have bee totally side tracked".

 

 

[toxicitizen]

Persona 5 Strikers

 

I actually finished it over a week ago but I decided to go for 100% achievements, so I spent some time grinding to be ready to take on the post-game optional bosses and then grinding for the last few achievements. Also, two of the unmissable story achievements didn't unlock for some reason, so I had to speedrun new game plus to get those as well. They were achievements for the penultimate dungeon, too, so I basically had to replay the entire game. So that was fun. At least it contributed to the overall grind... I think I just happened to reach the triggers for those achievements during Steam's Tuesday night maintenance. So I was likely offline at the time and something didn't work when the API call was made, I guess.

 

Anyway, overall I really enjoyed the game. I haven't played a lot of Omega Force games but this is by far the one that felt the least like an Omega Force game. It's basically P5-2 but with real-time combat. Although it falls in this awkward position of being a sequel to the original P5 and not Royal. I didn't miss Kasumi, though. Kasumi sucks. Don't @ me.

 

It's also a pretty garbage port. I mean, it ran mostly okay... after I figured out that I needed to go into my PC's BIOS to turn off all the E-Cores on my CPU. It was basically unplayable before that. Like, the worst stuttering I've ever experienced. I don't understand how this happens. It's like the second game ever that I have to do this for. And the first one was close to the CPU's launch, so it was a it more understandable. I don't remember what game it was, though... I guess in this case it's just that they had probably already stopped supporting the game by then.

 

Anyway, glad to finally be done with it! It was fun but I the endgame grind ended up being a bit longer than I would've liked.

 

 

I'm tempted to do P5 Tactica next or even the HD Remaster of SMTIII but I'm worried about getting burned out on Atlus games in general at this point. I mean, I just played P3 Reload and this back to back. Then SMTV Vengeance comes out in about two months, and there's The Answer and Metaphor in the fall. It's a good year to be an Atlus fan, don't get me wrong, but I don't wanna overdo it.

[Mister Jack]

Rise of the Ronin

 

Nioh 2 is basically one of my favorite games of all time so this was a no-brainer for me to buy. Unfortunately, I can't help but be a little disappointed with this one. It's not a terrible game, mind you. People who haven't played Nioh or Ghost of Tsushima will probably like it just fine. I've played both, though. The open world doesn't really add that much and it isn't nearly as pretty as GoT's, which has possibly the prettiest open world I've ever seen. The combat isn't as deep as Nioh's, either. It's definitely more accessible than Nioh by design and it's a lot more challenging than GoT was if you thought that game was too easy but this game is very focused on parries and the timing on them is VERY strict. Enemies tend to do combos that are very difficult to read too and if you mess up the parry timing on one hit then you're probably taking the whole combo right to the face. Blocking is admittedly more viable than it is in Sekiro, but if you want to get through this game you'll have to learn to parry at some point.

 

I did like that the story takes place during a period of Japanese history most games don't bother with, when Japan was just starting to open itself up to foreign trade (which means you can use pistols). I did also like that you can choose whether to support the shogunate faction who wants to establish ties with the west to learn their technology and medicine or the anti-shogunate faction who wants to expel all the foreigners because they're bringing over foreign diseases and corruption. Neither side is completely good or evil and they both make good arguments. I found myself flip-flopping between both factions multiple times before the story was over and yes, characters will call you out if you switch sides on them and then run into them later on. Even if you switch sides again to ally with them once more they'll hold a grudge over your previous betrayal and only welcome you back because they know how valuable you are, which I thought was neat.  There are things that work here, but if you haven't played Ghost of Tsushima yet I would just tell you to go play that instead because it does a lot of things better than this game. If you have played Ghost of Tsushima and you want more samurai action then you could do a lot worse. There is online co-op for the story missions but I am no longer subscribed to PS+ so I did them all with NPC allies. It's also a fairly easy platinum trophy. I'd say wait for a price drop.

Edited April 16 by Mister Jack

[MetalCaveman]

Warhammer 40000: Gladius

 

Kinda, completed the Space Marine story quests, there's no real story mode, you just set up a game, pick your faction and then complete the quests that pop up as you play through the skirmish.

 

A simplified Civ style game with no diplomacy because THERE IS ONLY WAR.

 

Getting familiar with the mechanics, specially resource management was a pain, really frustrating since it's super easy to fall into a doom spiral of:

 

"Don't have enough loyalty so everything is slowing down but I also can't build the stuff that gives me loyalty because I need more of this other stuff that I can't get because of the penalty for not having enough loyalty"

 

Given how long it takes to build stuff, gather resources and how much it cost to create units plus upkeep costs, you kinda have to think several turns ahead when deciding what to build and what units to make. It also doesn't help that the game doesn't tell you certain things, like how units heal faster when in your city, combine this with a UI that can get extremely confusing if you're new to the genre and it was quite a trip lol.

 

That said, once you get into a nice rhythm it's pretty fun, and you can easily find yourself going "One more turn, just one more turn, OK next turn will be the last" for hours lol. The story was cool, in that 40K kind of way.

 

Spoiler

Of course we all died, but it was FOR THE EMPEROR, so it's all good.

 

Grade: B-

[MetalCaveman]

Warhammer 40000: Mechanicus

 

A turn based strategy game, sorta XCOM style, but without base building.

 

The Adeptus Mechanicus find a planet full of Necron tombs, set out to explore/burn/purge/research each of them.

 

The presentation is really cool, exploring the tombs is shown as the Magos (lead dude) looking at a holographic display as your units move from room to room. The animation and details of each of the unit is really detailed, the dodge animation being kinda funny, in a good way. Music is great too, all around a good time, kinda. It does suffer from the same issues other games like these have, sudden ambushes feeling unfair, missed attacks that should have hit, enemies that have shields or other gimmicks that make them a pain in the butt to deal with, etc.

 

There's also the fact that this is basically Risk vs Reward: The Game, pretty much every action has to be calculated in that way, as you explore tombs, moving from room to room you'll run into a couple of different event types:

 

• Story events, something like "in this room a Necron artifact sits atop a pedestal" then you can decide whether to ignore it, destroy it, take it with you or other stuff depending on what's going on. You might get rewards or trigger a trap, losing HP.
• Glyphs, choose a symbol, get random result, sometimes it's HP regeneration, sometimes it's lose HP, or other stuff.
• Fights, pretty straightforward, just defeat some enemies and move on.

Each of these moves the awakening gauge further, in tombs, this means that enemies get different kinds of buffs, like faster healing, more enemies per battle, more HP, etc. In the overall game, at the end of your exploration, the number in the gauge gets added to the total awakening percentage, once it reaches 100% you have to leave the planet and the game is over.

 

You can also finish the game by defeating the last boss, but this is pretty hard, I managed because I used custom settings to make the game easier lol, it does disable achievements, but who cares about Epic achievements lol.

 

During battle all of your attacks require cognition, which you collect from specific points on the map, through skills or through defeating enemies. If you don't have enough, you can't do anything, deploying certain units also requires cognition, so it's a balancing game of whether to deploy more units, perform more attacks/skills with your current units or risk being ambushed but getting a lot of cognition from one of the supply points on the map.

 

It also has a fair amount of humour, there's two characters that are constantly at odds with each other, and one of them always quotes the scriptures, at one point bragging about having more than 500K tomes in his memory banks, with another character pointing out they didn't even know there were that many lol. The other one always speaks in pseudo-code like:

 

• if acquisition = true, You = welcomed as brother
• Process 1: Acquire, 2: Study, 3: GOTO 1

There's also a mission that is a reference to the tabletop game, with you exploring a tomb to collect a miniature version of that tomb, along the way finding and collecting several miniatures of each of the different enemy units, with your units wondering why would they have something like that.

 

One thing I learned after finishing the game is that there are different endings depending on which missions you take, my ending seemed fitting though, with the lead dude basically going "I didn't side with either of them, screw that, I'm too tired for that"

 

TL;DR: Cool game, neat presentation, excellent music, some issues but still overall a fun time, specially if you're a Warhammer 40K fan.

 

Grade: B+