[:plant:] The Game Review Thread - No Posts By Skills Because He Never Finishes His 10000 Games

Yes, this thread is essentially for those who finally finish their games JUST RECENTLY which they had bought or downloaded.

There's majority of purchases/downloads you made over the years but they cannot be just sitting there looking pretty and neglected aren't they? They should be played and to finish and to be mini/exhaustive reviewed in here. They can be VERY OLD titles from Commodore days to recent trash you picked up at the bargain bin. Also please don't forget to spoiler tag with "spoilersa" code on words necessary. Dates are optional, they're just there to show that you finished these recently for a multiple review post concerning the chronological order.

Feel free to conclude whether if it was possible or impossible to complete the game. IE 1000/1000, 100% or unlocking everything.

Reviews:

I had been on a crazy gaming itch lately.

8/3 - GTA: Liberty City Stories - Not bad game overall, it was in the aftermath of San Andreas that I wanted MORE GTA and I had this on the back burner for years. Made me glad I had this on reserve for some GTA craving. Its better than GTAIII, at least a bit more polished.

7/29 - GTA: San Andreas - I had left off about more than mid way in 2 years ago because well some of the missions were frustrating and getting more tedious. It doesn't help that the world and the bits was just LARGE. But its a good standalone GTA though. Something new to the table here and there but yeah its HARD to get back into from GTA IV which I played earlier. All those contrast colors (ORANGES holy shit) was killing my tv. But the best bits of this game were the voices and the dialog.

7/25 - Color Cross - Rental and beaten it in two days. Its a picross game but with colors. They did it alright, but it was awkward to a veteran player like me. I had seen some programs implementing different colors in a picross puzzle better than this game did. But still, it was easy nevertheless since they only punish you by your time. You can still unlock the rest of the game anyway.

7/21 - Limbo - Such an AWESOME little xbla title. For its price, it was well paid for both of us. I liked it for what Braid and Flower had to offer me. Something new, something refreshing, something neat.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

LOL, I'm sorry! But yeah I wasn't that much of a completionist though, only WITH RPGS I do. And only with jrpgs and grindfest rpgs. There's some games that are impossible to achieve with 100% completion and only people I know that likes that number often is Skills. xD

With THAT said, I should mention I did complete Color Cross because its not that hard to unlock all of the puzzles and to finish them fully. The only thing that seemed to be deterrent to that is your time score but that wasn't even formulated properly ingame either. The game personally was a rushed mess for some reason.

I didn't bother completing with GTAs because by that point, it wasn't all that fun when half of the time was spent saving, spray painting your cars and getting away from cops/gangs.

With Limbo though, I should go back someday for the achievements. The game's great enough to warrant another replay.

Nice Lunar review, AoL, I should take note of these missables when my copy get played. And yeah, old rpgs weren't that hard to complete once its set on finding every item may it be a reward or chest. Regarding gaming completion, I think its a neat addition to ask for in a review of a game. Hope you don't mind my integrating it in here too. Beating/finishing the game was the major hurdle, and we still get gamers that couldn't make it this far!

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Yesterday, I finally finished a rpg I had been neglecting in my psp for a while.

Popolocrois:

There's not really much to say about this cute rpg. But yet, I want to explain a bit about why this game should be checked out regardless of its flaws.

In 2D sprite gorgeous landscape and well developed characters, there was a 3 stories to be told in a long game but it doesn't feel long since I only played at least 40 hours or so, but it was just epic in several treks and discovering so much 2D awesomeness. From some mad serious animations of the characters to cute enemies (panda with tire?) to the adaptation of the anime and their scenes being used to tell the heavier graphic parts of the story made this game pretty darn neat to look at.

There's Pietro, the prince of Popolocrois that you play as the main character, you'd discover a lot about him as well as you also discover about the girl you love, Narcia, the forest witch. You also recruit several characters later on that gives your party a neat balance and an awesome set of skills in 2D goodness. An armored Knight, a mechanical evil genius with a major (but CUTE!) ego, a barely born dragon that looks like a sourpuss puppy (in size too), an arabian arrogant tomboy princess, and a kind animal-speaker archer. The story was woven quite well for you to meet all of these characters eventually as parts of the story. At most, they were held hostage of circumstances at some point.

The game was incredible in its finer details. Surpassing any other 2D rpg I could ever recall. Even Chrono Trigger and FFVI is getting their run for their fame with me here. When you visit several townships, you'd understand the massive scope of work involved. Especially the mechanical genius's two purely mechanical kingdoms. And there were a large amount of text involved too since citizens would not only say something new after some minor/major events that occurred outside of their walls, they say in two separate instances and sometimes three. What was astonishing was there barely any "negligible text" or translation errors or all that made jrpgs famous for. That's why I had to give this game major props for the work involved and dedication for finer detail.

However I should also mention that a lot of people would complain about the load times in this game. Between the next area to the battles, yeah, you'd be feeling the pain there when its frequent. But I've gotten past that and loved it for what it had to offer.

Second, the battle system is a little tedious since you have a grid to work with and it turns into simple tactics from there. Each character have a range of skills that affects range, size of the area, and synchronicity with another character to create a combo skill attack (but these are often complicated to pull off and quite often not worth it). This is not new of course, but the loading times that took to the battle scene was pretty big part of the reason why it was rather tedious at best.

I had beaten this game at level 32 (I did not powerlevel, just played normally til I discovered very late of a "battle evasion" skill I didn't know I had), and the game was still rather very easy which can be another deterrent. What's the point of leveling when most of the bosses can be beaten purely by the massed stock of healing items you can buy quite cheap? There's only one point in the game (quite close to the final boss) where all 4 of you were split up and follow the path to meet up with each other. A lot would say, this point of the game was the hardest if you weren't well stocked with items and didn't have a whole lot of levels of hp/def stats behind you. Even at level 30s, it was a bit trying and a little unnerving because I had never died ONCE. I didn't like the idea of starting over the whole THING lol for some random sudden critical hit.

But never mind all that, what this game also lacked the most which would have been made it much more wonderful was music. Its quiet for most part with battle/animated scenes exceptions. But maybe it wasn't LOUD enough lol, my psp was darn quiet for most part.

As for completion, I found out a bit later after this had happened that I missed a small (great finer details again) graphic of a counter being opened and I barely even saw the stairs going down to another shop that sold souvenirs. I only missed two but I realized eventually at end game that I was missing more than that somewhere and couldn't be bothered to try to get everything when I already am missing some of those. Sad face and all, but this game has a several neat quests that you should attempt at completion for anyway. IE recruiting back your people at end game, and you explore a new town or two and finding those summons for the baby dragon was a neat thing to do to attempt on your own. I did happen across one by accident!

In all, this game was a precious little gem of a rpg I liked very much. I just am glad I got the chance to play it. The game seemed rather obscure and graciously so. If you like what I have to say about it, please feel free to pm me and see if you'd like to buy this game from me.

And then this little gem today!

PixelJunk Shooter:

Great little game that. Its not all that hard since you don't really die and start over and such. Its probably the easier PixelJunk I had played (haven't checked out Monsters yet). And yeah, I finished it in one sitting today, aka 8 hours or so. That's because I was trying to be diligent in collecting gems as well as clearing away debris to find them.

As for completion, I'll probably go ahead and attempt to find all of the gems and get the trophies out of it. It doesn't seem all that hard to achieve 100% soon enough.

And god damn Skills, your awesome/stupid Crackdown 2 signature is so distracting.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Omnislash124

I remember that point in PoPoLoCrois when you split up. That was the only time I saw the game over screen because Narcia was in my party. Narcia's great for support, but horrible by herself.

I don't remember my level, but I don't recall ever having to grind either.

Yeah, I read beforehand to NOT USE her at all in that dungeon. I knew she was weak but lol, her skills were already massively weak overall. She's exactly like you said, a good support but that's it.

And to AoL, wow, 80 hours? DAMN, in a good way too. That'll show me a good rpg to blow through for a week. Definitely got me excited about this game. Props for a good comprehensive review!

And on with the topic, I recently completed PixelJunk Shooter. It wasn't all that hard really, just taking good care of finding the diamonds on your second playthrough. The rescue of men were easy enough because you can notice whether of ONE man dies and you'd retry to save him for sure. Got all of the achievements for it, a couple of them were a bit trying but no matter. Good game. Now only if I could do the same with PixelJunk Eden! That game is ridiculously hard to complete.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Oblivion and Fire Emblem Sacred Stones

Oblivion:

I just wanted to talk about this! Just because I saw someone was struggling with the wrpg concept in Oblivion and I felt compelled to share my experience.

"I hear you on warming up to wrpgs though.

I just finished Oblivion yesterday and mind you though, I watched my SO play this a year or so ago and in few attempts myself, I didn't know what I was doing or what I was supposed to be doing. I figure it out when a friend said he went into the game with a mindset of WHO he should be. Stealthy mofo with invisibility on. I'm like wow, I didn't think of it like that. Basically you have to be very specific in what you want to build your character as to be badass at this game. You just can't be half assed at it, JRPGs didn't offer you the choice of who you can be after all (which I was accustomed to).

In other words, if you want to be something very specific, you have to get that specific when you pick races, classes, and bonuses. In this case, I picked Khajit, Thief class with Thief bonuses. They can see in the dark, and they're nimble and fast.

You can be a tank or a end all mage or a pure invisible rogue. I went rogue and that was the best thing ever in this game (imho lmao). I buffed my Illusion quickly by casting that light spell over and over(cheap and easily acquired early on) and you do NOT have to level up (just don't sleep). So I would be able to get Chameleon and be able to cast it of course. Did the mage guilds quests first til I get to the Enchantment altars. I did all this at level 10 (just to also get Ring of Khajit which offers 35% chameleon), casted Chameleon on one piece of equipment (shield) with a Greater Soul Gem and I got real lucky with one loot that has 20% chameleon (a ring) a while back. So I was decent enough with my sneak, security, marksman, and illusion that I was just killing enemies in one hit by 3x Sneak attack (or 6x sneak attack with blade/blunt) with my Frostwyrm bow that you get from a miscellaneous quest (you can do this early one but lol you can DIE).

From what I watched my SO play, I didn't like how buggy the melee attacks were (friendly fire included). So taking on ranged attacks was my major preference to begin with. Best part of bows were you can pick up your arrows to restock your supply in enemies. I also like to have some kind of control of the situation when going up to a group of enemies with 72% chameleon equipped and sneaking. In a group of them, you still can be fast enough to reload to kill the other one by then. Just do it from the outer edges first then work your way in, their range of hearing/sight is piss poor even at level 27.

You just have to know what you're going for in this game and I'm quite sure it'll open up for you to exploit it. Just gotta know what those exploits are though.

I once attempted at level 27 to test my rogue and even then I was nearly invincible and that was just awesome. Only difference was there were more enemies to face the sharp end of my bow all too often lmao. I still love how in the mission, Defense of Burma, I managed to sneak all the way up to Sigil Stone without being detected. Only things that WERE detecting me were those dumb magic turrets. But they weren't a big deal. "

__________________

Its true, I had a huge blast in this game doing what Shin had said he had done. I was able to be a Master Sneak, Master at Security, Expert at Athletics (running), Expert at Aerobatics (jumping), Master at Marksman, Journeyman at Illusion, Journeyman at Mercantile, and Apprentice at Light Armor and few other things at level 10. The only thing the leveling does is just scaling the difficulty/loot with you by smarter AI or better equipment they're wearing. Just go sneak, 75% chameleon, one hit kill with 3x sneak attack with bows or 6x blunt/blade. I barely had any occurrences where I was attacked head on besides riding on horseback outside. Scaled loot wasn't a big deal for me because really, that frostwyrm bow (not sure but must had been the best bow the game could offer) was all I fucking needed. Arrows didn't matter, as long as I was sneaking and silver arrows are great for ghosts.

It was a developing mindset of my own to prefer ranged attacks for a while now, I detested melee attacks ever since I played some (FP specific) games that required rapid melees and that stuff only gave me nightmares. (literally) Anyway, Kyndig said he had issues with the bow and I asked him if he went pure stealth and he didn't say. He probably didn't and perhaps picked up the bow too late to make efficient use out of it. But he went on and raved about Morrowind and how I should play that. After Oblivion, I sure definitely will because I really did have a blast doing what I wanted. Key phrase being "doing whatever the fuck you want".

So yeah, I'm happy with Oblivion, I did try to play Morrowind once or twice a long time ago but it didn't offer me any sort of "breaking into" the game tips or anything to start with which was like incredibly daunting for an unexperienced wrpg player. If anything Oblivion now salivates my taste for wrpgs to try out now. Oblivion had great ambiance music for me (that I couldn't get tired of lol) and the environments were great but yeah, the dungeons were pretty tedious with same looking backgrounds but thankfully I didn't go trekking for long, before I decided to get with finishing the game business.

The guilds were alright, the Arena was SO easy (lol one hit kill from the gate!), Fighters Guild was pretty boring, Mages Guild is interesting to a point but whatever. Thieves' Guild was okay til the very last one and that was the most epic mission I had ever been on and really loved it. I was able to utilize my character a great deal in that mission. Never had to fight a blind Monk. Dark Brotherhood guild is hilarious with the language and the victims involved. Poor Lachance, he was great...til the end. xD Main quest was more like "what the fuck? but okay..."

I didn't purposely mean to go 1000'ing it but yeah that's all it took really, just finishing the 4 major guilds (and the Arena), and the main quest will net you 1000 achievement points. I considered finishing the main quest as beating the game, I figure to complete the game you'd just have to like explore EVERYWHERE OMG BORING NO, and finish up all of those miscellaneous and free range quests or something. I wasn't gonna go into that, I got my epic mission from Thieves guild and laughs from the Dark Brotherhood to consider moving on from the game. Good game and all that.

Fire Emblem Sacred Stones:

After finishing the previous Fire Emblem (7) on GBA, I find this game a refresher in terms of difficulty for sure. I appreciate being able to access the main inventory from the hero and being able to go into random monster battles to level up my guys. I didn't bother with the tower or anything. I did use the Arena til they were able to be promoted at least. Mostly to find out which characters are godly to keep and using of course. Cormag is my favorite character, he's just a monster on his own. But really, the game was pretty easy enough. You at least get those uber weapons BEFOREhand (fucking FE7... >.<) and see which characters can at least equip those due to having S rank in that weapon.

But whatever, easy tactics, cute game and all that. Didn't bother for completion because well, I'd have to replay through it again with Erika's story and I was tired of tactics gameplay by then. (Playing them both back to back lol.) And of course, on hard mode and keep your characters alive. But yeah if FE7 that fucking hard, I'll be able to play through the other FE games at least. That'll be enough resetting my gba now.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Whelp, I'm on a roll.

Super Scribblenauts:

RENTAL. Let me bold that for you. RENTAL. Yes, this game only took me an entire DAY to beat. Nothing more, and I think the former game of the two was actually longer thanks to having a lot more levels (action levels I suppose even). So this is just pretty darn short in comparison but its a good rental. I had a blast in a one sitting, however, the most of the levels were confided with the use of adjectives only, and there's quite of bit of repetition there in use of puzzle solving using adjectives in a block STAGE of a level, not a narrative type.

But never mind that, they fixed the controls right? LOL, you barely even use your character much anyway, at least from what I saw. You still needed to use the stylus to navigate through the game though. Jumping is still lame.

Anyway, as for completion, I actually did the optional levels with sheer amount of luck. Dumb luck really. Pro-tip for the final optional level, sometimes you can just use the very thing you're having trouble with. AIR VENT, AIR VENT.

But its a rental, so I didn't bother checking what else I had to do for 100% completion like I'm sure there's 3 allowed inputs per chance of the level to get merits? I still beaten those optional levels so. I saw I got merit for just about dying by saving the starlite and doing a lot of chaining of my creations. But overall, this game is okay, it just screams RENTAL.

Kirby's Epic Yarn:

Great game, very easy, and cute. Sated my fix for kirby somewhat. Their explaining that this wasn't an original IP for a kirby game explains a lot. There are levels that are so easy and so short you wonder if this was made for wiiware. It was unusual for me to see in a Kirby game, they usually have some measure of difficulty that made it fun, but then again I could be incredibly biased since I played tons of kirby games in the past and already experienced enough.

IE there's this one level that was supposedly hard (5 stars) on race challenge but lol, I surpassed the Mara by half of the time for her to get there, but the point was, the levels design were excellent; smooth and fluid. You'd no trouble with the race challenges on nearly all of them.

Thankfully they do offer some measure of difficulty by giving you optional challengers to run up with in the home world. All of these comes with a time limit except for the races. Zeke offers hide and seek, you find 5 of his friends through a level. Beandrix offers you to find all of the gems (they called it something else...) or equivalents of. Buster offers you to kill all of the enemies or equivalents of. Carrie offers you a carry restriction through a level, you find a way to carry her and put her in a spot. Mara offers the races and has 30 of them which is most of all 5 characters' challenges and they were the most fun and utilizes most of these levels to their real challenge imho. At least you'll see how great the level design is.

I won't comment on anything else because well, its an adorable game and that is essentially what it is really. I didn't hear of the music for several legit reasons so I cannot comment on that and the graphics are alright. The innovation for the yarn parts is neat, if anything, the best part of the innovation in this game was digging through the fabric. Nothing pops out more innovative than that.

I also appreciate kirby still being able to take on different forms. My biggest surprise was the dolphin. I swear by Ecco that some of the levels using the dolphin had ripped right out of Ecco's page book. LMAO, but its awesome to use the dolphin and it's gameplay mechanics immediately reminding me of HOW AWESOME Ecco was. (The jumps, the nosedive, etc etc.)

As for completion, I'm not 100% sure on this (lazy to check) but you pretty much gotten everything on this game if you were consistent with your levels and getting gold in them and their treasures. What I wasn't sure about is whether if getting GOLD will unlock a challenger's level or not. I pretty much got all of them gold except for 3 of them at the near end and one of them isn't exactly a challenger type of level lmao. But yes, you'll need to get more than just gold in a boss level to unlock two more optional levels and their treasures after that.

I can be safe to say I'm 12 pieces away in fabric (all from challengers) from 100% completion. I'd say I'm just about done with the game after that.

Anyway, great game, highly recommended for anyone.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Easy as it gets.

Golden Sun: The Lost Age:

Alright, I can see where Seris was going with this. The first game's plot was at least coherent enough to be somewhat enjoyable but still my first thought the game was just mediocre. This one fare no better, with silly non-plot related events inbetween and consistently not having an idea where to go next. But never mind that though, I like how most of the Djinni were easy to get (and most of them don't even fight you), and the optional boss can be beaten by pure summon rushing it.

I had a 100% file from the first game and had no problems doing that again for this game after all. Dullahan was pretty lame since he fell in 3 turns thanks to summon rushing, and most of our weapons were pretty strong from the blacksmith but lol, the part I hated the most? Running out of space in the inventory! :\ Most of the items on there were equipment (up to 5 pieces or 6), healing/cures/psy stars/revivers, blacksmithing items, plot related items, 3 class changers and the darn psyenergy stones. So its a pain for a completionist when you're constantly recycling the darn inventory to make room for new shit. Yeah.

The music didn't wow me like it did in the first game... it was just so and so. But with all this said though, I still am looking forward to play Golden Sun DS anyway. As a rental at the very least. I still appreciate Camelot trying with these two but I still want Shining Force.

Sword of Mana:

Okay I had quite a bit of fun in this game when I first encountered a cyclops. YEP. Right there, the very powerful monster that can one hit KO you, I had a blast trying to down the fucker even if it took me a hour. From there, I purposely sought out the others that I could find/encounter just to have that added challenge. I eventually switched to black monster. (Batmos in my case were excellent target practice with my bow.)

The rest of the game though is alright, pretty great sprite work and rich environments at least. I also still love Legend of Mana and its homage to artwork here too. The music was enjoyable too. The rest of the game was pretty simple down to magic/class/weapons you can pick from. I appreciate the fact that you won't get penalized if you went one way or the other really.

I really am glad I picked the bow as my main weapon. It would hit the enemy twice in succession when it is above you. Its a sprite space issue. Imagine the arrow from the bow in an arc and you first hit the sprite on its head right, the arrow would keep falling past and occasionally will hit the sprite again at the legs or feet before it hits the ground. Its awesome and not only that you'd still be safe. The only enemies to look out for are the ones that reflects your physical attacks right back at you.

Anyway obviously I went with the heroine and I'm pretty glad I did. Her staff was invaluable in range to cast magic at enemies that are immune to physical attacks. They don't occur often but can be extremely annoying. However, in her case, I went as a Ninja Master with a goal to have extra evade/extra accuracy/extra critical and using that bow was great with it. More over, you could farm a bit for decent smithing parts and you'd be set from little 3/4th of the game.

I thought I could go set about completing this but I saw that in order to have a complete Lil Cactus log, you'd need 5 friends, 5 gbas and 5 copies of this game to get one summon. Its pretty darn lame and I figured I'll just dismiss it and ignore that and go about my business. I ran into another snag, to get all of the spirits, you'd need to do a lot of bullshit pretty much. First spirit are mandatory. Second spirit requires you be dead dedicated at side quests to get Dudbears' gold pieces to buy them (second set of spirits) from a collector. Third set of spirits requires you to be dedicated at searching at the ground near the traveling cannons for those bit of glittering specks on the ground to unleash the spirits within them later on with a previous owner who lost them.

I got this far, then the four/fifth/sixth sets were somewhat interchangeable from what I saw. It was the fourth set that I had trouble with because this isn't concrete or set in stone kind of deal. Its all over the place. Several faqs and my own guide conflicts each other in details. It pisses me off wandering all over and not get them because they're all wrong. Meanwhile I was trying to figure out which enemies drop those elemental coins HIGHER rate of drops and then saw that I have to travel quite a bit to kill those too. So at this point I was more or less said fuck it, I wanted to finish this today!

So I just pretty much RAN and RAN past all of those enemies at the final chapter/dungeon/area towards the boss. I was already high in levels and my bow was good enough to carry me thus far. And even then, the final boss went down in three hits. ^___^ My bow was lv 75 at that point. Its awesome. (Remember, two hits in a row, critical, and no misses.)

That's one thing I liked about SoM, you can play however you like and especially at your own pace. But I still prefer the original though, I just can't remember why lmao. Its been a decade or two!

FELIPE NO

Doot doot, I managed to knock out 3 games since...

Mother 3 as in my journal as you guys would know. Spoiler ahoy though.

Skies of Arcadia Legends:

Well, this was a friendly challenge by Omagnus and I finally got my butt around to it. Everything is pretty awesome about it except for that heinous battle system. I still couldn't wrap my head around on how bland and how broken it was. But yeah I'll just leave it at that and say that Fina and MP are useless in comparison to items/special moves. You pretty much honed down to one major attacker, one healer, one casting a magic shield and one to cast a physical shield. Rest of the enemies outside of bosses and such are pretty weak enough for Aika's Lambda Burst in one turn. But yeah with bosses, that's your method right there.

But never mind all that... especially if you don't care for the battle mechanics or whatever, you'd love this game for the ship battles, pirate themed settings, some plot, some bosses, and definitely love these characters. There's even sky exploration discoveries for you to find and to collect if you're into that sort of thing. And some music is awesome too. I'm not sure about the DC version but in GC, there's this plot line involving collecting Moonfish and giving it to Maria's chick on Doc's boat. Mannn the music on that boat is pretty captivating. That and the final boss battle... which is a shame because I ended it pretty quickly (something like 5 turns!).

I at first thought some parts of the game were somewhat shallow til some plot certainly surprised me and tore my heart strings once more. Especially just about at the near end really. There were 3 plot twists that caught me off guard and made it much more memorable than I thought it could be. But yeah, I highly recommend this game, just ignore the flaws in the battle system though.

As for completion, I went ahead and did it because its not all that hard to do. Just be dedicated in searching for chests, discoveries earlier on, listening for Moonfish, don't run away/fight more etc. The reward is only to unlock the 3 optional secrets in the game, a spiffy sword for Vyse, an optional boss and a cute sky discovery.

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future:

Yep, this great series caught me in its charm and their puzzles were making me to be a fan. I couldn't really go into depth here seeing that most of the game was taken place in a puzzle. I still love this game's puzzle music, and there's some additional music I liked. The first menus, picture book, and wandering about music are all awesome.

I noticed the change in difficulty, its not as bad as the previous laytons whereas you have a bunch of math solutions, you still do get a bunch of trick question puzzles though. The slider puzzles aren't as bad (it also could be that I'm getting better at it), you'll access the most difficult ones in the optional puzzle menu after you beat the game. I still didn't mark this as a complete because really, I did have to retort to FAQs online because I wasn't as good in math lmao. I do love slider/logic deduction/building puzzles though. The trick questions (think outside of the box) were among my favorites.

And yeah, I liked the plot and that ending was a tearjerker too.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Well, it has been a whole month lol. I did finish a few games. Kinda. I've been slacking a little.

Majora's Mask:

Great game. I remember being put off years ago by this whole time limit thing and was concerned that I wouldn't be able to do a roundabout method (hit dungeon and come back) until I actually found to be able to teleport to owl statues on this playthrough. LOL only if I had played a little bit further and realize that there's much faster ways of travel, I'd not worry about the time limit all that much. Wearing the bunny hood, riding Epona, even Goron's Spin-a-dash can be speedy traveling too.

So once I got past that and realize the true gem of this game was in wearing all sorts of masks and being able to do all sorts of things with it. Most of them were useless but a few were great. IE Stone mask makes you invisible to enemies but not on screen which is extremely useful in bypassing a lot of annoying enemies. Another was a Fairy Mask that allows you collect fairies without damning yourself doing some stupid minor little detail of accurate jumping or aiming or needing to get the hookshot later.

So yeah after the first dungeon I was having quite a bit of fun and recognized the gem this game had and especially after OoT which I had loved. Its just a different beast altogether and should had been treated that way.

I didn't bother with completion here because those minigames were very unnerving and frustrating. Didn't go that far to go nuts on it but I did however collected all of the masks. Just to see how majestic this Fierce Diety mask would be. And it WAS!

Recettear - A Item Shop Tale:

Gifted by Skills on steam and I played the demo of this game before. My first take was great concept, bargaining and ripping people off just like REAL life lmao. But then I hit the dungeon. Ehhhh. I'm not much of a keyboard user so I was put off by it for a while til Skills told me I could I use the controller for it. Lo and behold, thanks to steam, I can use my gamepad for this especially during the dungeon treks. I'd like to be very nimble at my turns and direct hits if possible. It was just too risky to take a whole lot of hits and not know when you'll get another healing item later.

So after I fired it up via gift weeks later, I was engrossed with it and spent nearly 3 days obsessed with it. NOTHING BUT THIS GAME for three days. LOL, I figured out how to do a lot sales and already hit the 200k mark payment before I ultimately bought out everything to start over on another loop on purpose. A loop is essentially a restart right from the first day but you carry over just about everything except your own money. That's right, your level, items, even customer's fat ass wallets are viable. And I was doing SO well on this second loop that by the time I was supposed to pay the 50k debt, I was raking in 800k. LOL there was a very VERY generous boom involving precious metals and equipment. (In other words, just about EVERYTHING I HAD.) Boom is a news topic you'll see marqueeing at the top of the screen telling you the trends of the customers' interests. AKA cold weather warning, warm clothes are in need! I'd put those specific items right on the display windows and then BAM, shit loads of WOMEN would come in HORDES just to buy all that crap.

So yeah, I had a massive increase of customers thanks to that horde of women previous to that double boom. Therefore the increase of customers and their wallets, and my massive mark up on items helped a great deal in a period of three game days. xD It was awesome and naturally once I paid off all of my debt, I went dungeoning for real. I was doing well with Charme, she had a great dash ability that I liked. But then I fought Griff. ;_____________;

You have several dungeon heroes that are to be available to you throughout the dungeons you unlock. Each of them have several different abilities aka like Charme and her dash and to detect traps from chests that you can just avoid altogether. Your first dungeon adventurer is Louie who is basically a tank really. Only good for a starter until you hit harder dungeons. These dungeons can go for 5 floors (10 at the last one) before you can exit through a door. Thankfully, the game saves these exits so you can return through that door and proceed to a new 5 floors after. And thankfully this game ALSO allows you to do Boss Rush, which is conveniently skips the floors but just boss floors only. Most of these bosses are quite easy as long as you're appropriately leveled.

Now after all that, there's fusion. Enemies drop random stuff. Common to somewhat rare to dang rare items. And at the Merchant's Guild, you can fuse these ingredients to create uber equipment for your adventurers (GRANTED if they paid for it lmao or that other way around where you die and they're equipped with it... or something like that, I only got lucky with Charme buying GOOD stuff prior to my needing her then.)

But the best part of the game was just ripping these customers off GOOD. xD I had a blast while it lasted. I tend to pick up on it from time to time. I do like the dungeon trekking but the gathering of fusion ingredients can get real tedious. But yes, what a surprise this game took me by!

Monkey's Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge:

In the middle of my massive slacking on OTHER GAMES I was supposed to finish, I figured I'll give this a go. Enjoyable game and I love point and click adventures. But lol what was that ending. Don't care, will go for their third once its out.

Oh I have NO idea what was the answer to his riddle. If there's a tree in a forest and it falls, what color is it? xD

I didn't get all of the achievements because well I had no idea how to get about those. I'd probably look it up if I'd bother.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I didn't do a whole lot this month. Just generally sleepin' in a bit.

Fire Emblem Path of Radiance:

Great game. I appreciated the fact that I could take the animated shortcut to move things along quicker. Not only that, there's an Easy mode! My main problem with tactics is I often am too aggressive/impatient/confident in unit advances. And so easy mode solved the problem and help moved the game along swimmingly.

I didn't like Ike at first, but he matured somewhat and the plot definitely got way better in the introduction of furries. I missed them from the Shining Force days. And yeah, great memorable cast too.

And thankfully, unlike the GBA FE, I haven't lost a single unit. And with all that said, I'm still glad I went to Easy mode because Ike got royally screwed on his stats. He barely scratched the Black Knight even at the recommended level. :\

Didn't bother with completion because I'm sure I should at least play Normal/Hard modes at least lmao. And there's those uh extra maps/challenges or whatever. Didn't bother because honestly I was sick of tactics and ready to move on. But yeah, the plot was decent enough to get me even piqued into playing the sequel, Radiant Dawn very soon.

Red Dead Redemption:

Yeah, I was about to head into Tales of Symphonia when I remember just how much that game pissed me off the last two attempts I took with it. So Omagnus and I were chatting and I asked him what else can he challenge me in picking a game I should play soon. He pretty much picked this since he loved it. What do you know, this game blew me away in the fucking DETAIL.

LOVE LOVE LOVE the sets and hell there's TWO movies referred in this game that I KNOW.

The game was challenging at first with the limited array of weapons, I only got the crappy ones and I figured I'm safe enough to travel/mess about in the desert. WRONG. Cougars would KO me often. So yeah I got smartened up to move forward in the missions to pick up better weapons eventually unlocked in stores or otherwise.

Then the whole game just picked up the pace normally and got easier believe it or not. I loved my Bolt Action Rifle, it has super accuracy and always nailed the bastards in one shot. Saved me a bunch of times.

But yeah I had fun with the hunting aspect and enjoyed finding strangers and doing their silly missions. Greatest western themed game I had ever played for sure.

Omagnus is encouraging me to complete this via ingame completion. Not by achievements of course since a third of those are multiplayer only :\ I more or less did all of the ambient challenges because they were fun. But I didn't get much in bounties or try too seriously in finding/unlocking the wardrobe section. I told OP I'll get around to that when I'm in the mood for some more run and gun and hogtying and dragging them lmao.

And man... the string of missions were perfect in Act 3, it was the winding down of the game and you get to appreciate the finer points of how the game was played. I loved it because it gave me a sense of tranquility when unlike in other GTAs, most of those missions were insane and going all out on EVERYTHING. Great ending too.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Awesome, I barely remember much about Mystic Quest (which speaks for itself) other than its just dumb fun little rpg back then. But yeah, its a nice gem to find in some dark dusty corner somewhere in midst of shelf worthy rpgs.

So I have been finishing games but I still haven't caught up with my horrible purchases' total yet. Its not even March yet but I already gotten 10, TEN friggin new games already. I need to catch up mannnnn. Or otherwise, my darn backlog will never be beaten lmao. Again, I'm trying to reduce it to a good tentative number I can manage (30 to 50 and I have 85 to go) and no way in hell I could give up on gaming lmao.

Tales of Symphonia:

So yeah, I finally get into this. I loved the Tales series despite of only having played Phantasia, and both Destinies on the ps1. What threw me off was the not so linear battle field (think Legend of Mana) and it was horribly awkward for me to adjust to in the first two playthroughs I attempted. But soon and third time the charm, after I had it set on Semi-auto, and start executing techs as well as leveling up like mad (7 levels in fact) in the FIRST DARN AREA of the game, I managed to do well for the rest of it after. Once I finally get past my silly (and pointless) gripe, I managed to see more of the game. First I was surprised at how small like all of the dungeons are. Literally like most of them have like 3 to 5 rooms in total. But that was nice change of pace from say Phantasia (lol) and I was worried that it would set in the shallow like setting for the rest of the game. But nah, its perfectly paced and great to get through. Best use of the sorcerer's ring ever.

But that's not what made this game all so fuck awesome for me. Its the skits. And that Kratos dude. HUGE <3 for him. The plot was great, and especially his storyline was huge. The skits were totally worthwhile waiting for in areas because majority of them were hilarious and had me actually laughing out loud which was rare for me from a rpg. I only regret I played this game so darn late and missed out on the fanfare when the rest of the tales series came along. Good thing I'll be catching up on this series this year (for fucking sure).

That's what just great about Tales of Symphonia, it got me hooked again for the Tales series and I'm sooo ready to blow through Legendia and Abyss very soon. And then the sequel New World and Vesperia.

And fuck no, I'm not playing through this game 3 times for completion. Its awesome but omg, to get all of the titles? LOL that'd be insane. Its doable sure and its a great game to replay several times too, don't get me wrong. I just need to GET onto the other games already lmao.

<3

Resident Evil REMAKE:

I barely remember playing the first one on ps1, so I figured this is worth playing through at least once before I put it away. Heh, right away, I remember just HOW I got hooked onto RE series right from the first HOUR into this game. Man, it was that awesome, what the hell happened? But yes, I got obsessed with RE right from Nemesis and got into the rest. Its just fun and silly horror along with silly plot devices to cinematics.

I actually considered replaying this again because it was just that fun and short to play. I'd totally kill for a compilation of the ps1 trilogy for ps3 or something. Man that'd make my day. As for completion, I have no idea what would be it... for this game lol. I suppose playing as Chris also and uh getting everyone out alive? LOL, I didn't even do that with Jill, I just rather fumbled my way out lmao.

<3 Jill forever

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Whelp, here's another twofer beaten!

Baten Kaitos Origins:

I absolutely loved this game very much. I couldn't believe how beautiful it was through and through. Its just as I expected after loving the crap out of its predecessor which is based 20 years after this in the plotline. The battles, the magnus (card system), the characters, the plot, even some VA were awesome. But the music and the backdrops just made this game more awesome in execution. Heck, I didn't mind battlin' thanks to the music! I was rocking out to the tunes in the battle enough times that I was overleveled lmao. But it was perfect in tune with everything else, I couldn't expect anything less from this game. The Guillo character was awesome too.

Its pretty much 10/10 from me. I only regret for playing it so late, I recall this game didn't have a guide for magnus mixing and I remember how massively extensive it was in the first game. I was worried I'd get stuck if I didn't have it, thankfully gamefaqs have it nowdays (2 to 3 years later apparently).

But what astounds me is that this game only sold a measly pitiful 6k on the first month. Terrible. Absolutely terrible, and we won't be expecting anymore from this beautiful duo to be a series. :\ Shame, real shame.

And no I didn't complete this game because of the massive magnus mixing and the time required (one required 35 actual real time to mature one of the cards into another...) is pretty insane. Not only that the limited blank magnus you have in the beginning doesn't help. It'd require at least 2 playthroughs and I definitely had my fill from battlin' with that awesome soundtrack.

Advance Wars:

Yes lmao, Manablade/Tritoch got me this game as a surprise belated xmas gift. It was awesome and simple enough for me to play. I was surprised at how simple it was compared to BHR but then I understood that its meant to be played in that order if I were to know the basics a lot better, I'd have done BHR a lot better. It definitely helps to have the plot set up from the campaign to understand how BHR got set up.

First thing I was taken back by how "youthful" it was compared to BHR and the art was more cartoony. They're all great in their telling, and I didn't realize how huge of a character Sonja was in plot and ability. It definitely helps you fully recognize the other characters their abilities by actually fighting them. IE, I had no idea that Eagle's Lightning Strike allows him to MOVE again when I picked up on BHR... I completely fail on that Eagle intro mission lmao. And total lol at this game being released on 9/11. Christ, no wonder why its hard to find.

And no, I'm not gonna complete this game, I'm not a huge fan of tactics when it comes to scoring very well. I tend to FAIL badly.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I'm on a roll this week!

Ghost Trick:

Great little gem! Just picked it off and got hooked. Great music, great incentive to play, great plot, great characters, great animation! I appreciate the ingenuity of puzzle solving associating with saving a person's life.

Not sure what's there to complete here besides exploring everywhere and being sure to make contact with every little core.

Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon:

This game isn't as long as I thought it'd be. Its a very simple rpg/survival horror with anime movies inbetween. Even with a small cast, it did laid a compelling story being told in form of memories that you pick up and hear/read. I like to say that this game did an excellent job on the VAs during the memories that were being read. The memories are found as a package looking thing that is being glowed by dragonflies (although not always!) and when you take it to a save point, you'll hear the story behind these said items inside the packages.

It also did a very great job with the interaction on cats and the wiimote's speaker. There's a huge emphasis on the wiimote's speaker which I appreciate a greater deal because like with Silent Hill's radio you can hear enemies coming on beforehand.

The sets and the overall theme is pretty well placed and its rather interesting and beautiful in its own human-despair-isolation sort of way. But yes, max level is 35 and I've beaten it in like less than 20 hours even after finding all of the memories in form of items that you pick up along your travels.

As for completion, it wasn't that hard. I was diligent in purchasing those oddball items from the Merchant and finding all of those memory items. I was worried about PoNRs (Points of No Return) though, but thankfully even when I got to the very end, I apparently only missed two that I can access from there without a problem. I was surprised to find a surplus of hidden ones at the Hotel and that quickly garnered my focus on finding them or be extra diligent from there. Good game overall.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I'd love to see a SHIT review from anyone on Dragon Age II just to convince me NOT to get into the game. Please do so people. So far I only have seen a couple of one liners from Deni, Mo0, Jessykins, and a couple others in the chocojournals.

I also have beaten 3 other games... One of them is that 999 game but I'm going for completion so it'll be a while before it'll end up on here. Its not fair to really review that game based off on just one lame ending.

Golden Sun Dark Dawn:

I cannot believe I skipped this review. This game was utter piece of shit, I imagine that's why. I didn't feel like reviewing how I wasted my time with this game. I'll just let this summarize it for you.

And they had that stupid thing where whenever something happened, every single party member had to react to it, even though about half of them said absolutely nothing of importance (especially Himi, who could have been replaced by a sock puppet for all the personality she had).

oh my god yes

Kraden: So your parents were heroes...
Tyrell: :-)
Karis: :-)
Rief: :-)
Amiti: :-)
Eoleo: :-)
Sveta: :-)
Himi: :-)
Matthew: :-)
Kraden: ...and they went on this dangerous journey...
Tyrell: :-(
Karis: :-(
Rief: :-(
Amiti: :-(
Eoleo: :-(
Sveta: :-(
Himi: :-(
Matthew: :-(
Kraden: ...stop that, it's annoying and it takes time away from my long winded ramblings.
Tyrell: >:-|
Karis: >:-|
Rief: >:-|
Amiti: >:-|
Eoleo: >:-|
Sveta: >:-|
Himi: >:-|
Matthew: >:-|

*SPOILER ALERT*
I first played Golden Sun the year it came out, back in November/December '01 (Best Christmas present ever). I was swept into the fantastic, wonderful game that was a gaming staple in my life for a VERY long, hard time. Years later, I discovered Lost Age, and a new adventure began, an exciting sequel filled with difficult, challenging puzzles, familiar elements, etc. Playing as the 'bad guys' from the first game was one of the coolest plot twists of my childhood, and teaming up with both Isaac and Felix's parties was the epitome of GBA roleplaying games. You all remember.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across Dark Dawn in the game shop. Without hesitation i purchased and started playing it. And... yeahhhh...

1. This game was, well, very, very easy. I can say with complete honesty that I did not ever lose a fight, nor did I at any point spend time power leveling up. Money was never a serious problem, and you learn psyenergy at a quick enough rate that you are always one step ahead of the enemy. Again, with complete honesty, I can count on one hand the number of times I resorted to summoning Dijinn (Slapped together at the last second final boss was not on that list, fyi.) I felt this was a minor setback, as simply playing a Golden Sun-esque game made it seem...acceptable, and I felt smarter than I was.

2. This story was just... terrible. Really, it was god awful. I'm not trying to pick at it, really, I just could not find any enjoyment or care for this world or it's plight. For a very good portion of the game, you are hunting for a roc feather. Yeah, cool, Isaac and Garret trusted us with this awesome task. Oh, save the world on the side, just because we can? Because we're the children of Warriors of Vale? Okay, sure. It's on the way. Blados? Pink haired woman (Chalis? I beat the game twenty minutes ago and I already forget)? Who the devil are they? They kind of randomly appear, push me in the right direction, and then suddenly BAM, final bosses. I'm still not sure what exactly they were trying to accomplish (It's probably explained by one line of dialogue, or reading the mind of someone four destroyed towns ago).

3. Speaking of lines of vague dialogue, notice how frequently it says "the Warriors of Vale were a controversial group?" Name ONE person in Dark Dawn who finds them controversial, beyond Patcher's Place. Nearly everyone you meet is sure you'll help them, because "You're the children of the Warriors of Vale (admittedly, you DO look exactly like them), you must be here to help me!" Also, seriously; Kraden again? Now I understand the whole Golden USn anti-aging thing, but Isaac and Garret are SIGNIFICANTLY older than they were. I don't even think Kraden got new portrait. Also, we get to see him, Isaac, and Garret, but not the rest? Come on, not even Ivan? Karis has been bumming around with Matthew and Tyrell for God knows how long, and he doesn't even poke his head out the door to wish her farewell? Not to mention the lack of Piers, Mia, Sheeba, Jenna, and Felix (although Felix was explained away easily enough, not even cameos from the others who we KNOW exist in THIS WORLD annoyed me).

4. Another thing. The characters you get in this party. I have one in particular to gripe about... Who the BLAZES is Himi? I sneezed during a cutscene and suddenly I have a crappy Japense-themed member of the party. She has less dialogue then some of the Dijinn, I swear; deus ex machina with the whole reveal power. Guess we couldn't just shove it into Tyrell's head, needed to find an eighth character to fill that slot. Also, Amiti's parentage? remember that storyline? Yeah, I do. And Reif's sister! She's off with Piers? gee, that's sweet... Could we SEE that? Suddenly, right before one of the final sequences that girl who was important for one scene is off with a character we'd much rather be seeing than these fools (don't get me wrong, I'm a big Matthew, Amiti, and Eoleo fan). I was almost disgusted with the character choices. I think their mistake was trying to squeeze eight into one game; it just didn't work out. You get the last three almost forced upon you at the last possible second, it was frustrating and weak story.

5. I... I just couldn't get into it. The characters (NPC and otherwise) were annoying and trite, the combat was too easy, the Eclipse event (while admittedly I liked the concept at first) was very annoying to put up with and VERY cheap (I really, really missed the ability to travel back to old towns to use my powers on the objects there, or read the minds of those people awaiting the end of the world. The inability to get back to, say, the Lookout Cabin or eventually Belinsk really bothered me). The ending felt rushed, and... I really just didn't care. I never fully understood why the Blados' crew was doing what they were, the survival of Alex seemed very unecessary, the game simply dropped certain storylines and left things unresolved in the wake of your travels, and it seemed like all of a sudden a simple retrieval quest turned into a world saving quest at the drop of a hat. And why the BLOODY MUFFINS doesn't Isaac live with his wife?! Seriously?! Was it a fling, were they not meant to be, what?! We don't even SEE her in this, and she was an important part of the two first games! She wasn't even on the same continent as this game! Oh, but Piers (though awesome) is around in a ship somewhere, picking up stray water adepts for kicks (and we don't see him either, just know he's there, waiting to take our other cast off characters. Himi's coming your way soon, I promise). The final blow was being teased with old map, and being unable to access it. The Mercury lighthouse was a sad reminder of how fantastic the story was in the first games, and how sadly they've muddled it.

Well, that's it. I don't know if I can handle another Golden Sun game, now. It's going to have to be phenomenally better, because after this evening, my spirit has been broken. My apologies for the length of this rant, but it's being stewing to a slow boil since Konpa Cave. As a writer, I sincerely hope they get everything back on track for the hopefully next wonderful installment, and we can put this behind us.

He pretty much summarized why I hated this game. SO MUCH. So much sadness. Anyway avoid this unless you're a silly diehard GG fan. I also didn't bother with completion because really, just the mere idea of doing the same damn summon rushing Dullahan pisses me right off when I just beaten him in TLA not but mere months ago.

FFF Chocobo's Dungeon:

Very adorable dungeon crawl. The voice acting though is extremely atrocious though. The remixes in that game is awesome enough but still. The plot was interesting but embarrassing to watch. o.o' But the best part of it is doing the trial dungeons. They certainly challenge your skills at dungeon crawling. Thankfully I've played a much more difficult dungeon crawlers than this so those trials were nothing. Not even that 100 floor dungeon either. It was very easy imho and I went and completed it because it was that simple enough. Oh, you do need to catch those dumb romantic phrases to give to Romantic Hero X to get those optional trial dungeons from the replay dungeons menu (over in the church).

It was surprisingly convenient along with the ability to switch/take on jobs. You can be a white/black mage or you can be a knight/dragoon/ninja/dark knight. You can also be yourself or a dancer or a thief. Its nifty being able to dungeon crawl differently and be able to match yourself up to par with certain type of enemies you're not sure about killing. The jobs themselves has their own level abilities (up to 8 levels and have up to 12 abilities or less) that makes thing much more even between all classes so you won't screw yourself. AKA if you got surrounded as a white mage, you can cast teleport/escape to get out of that bind easy. If you got an enemy that is invulnerable to physical attacks while you're a knight, you can still use the knockback ability to postpone the attacks towards you while you work out another solution.

The traps aren't all that bad surprisingly. Some of them works FOR you like those green seals, if you were that low enough on hp, they can heal you instead. And most of the status effects can wear off within 10 steps and you're fine. Pretty much nulls the purpose of a ribbon if you ask me. The only effect that is dangerous is the silence because all job abilities are affected by this.

With all that aside, I did like the forging equipment deal. The equipment themselves can be forged with status effects themselves. AKA you can put on a silence protection on it. Or to boost item drops or to boost exp or attack. Or you can put poison on your attack (talons). Its pretty awesome and nifty to be able to do this. Besides the jobs and their abilities, being smart with your equipment goes a REAL long way too. Thankfully you can earn enough gil to pay for the upgrades easy. You just make sure not to sell those with +1 because they're CHEAPER to fuse instead of upgrading stand-alone.

And the reward for completing the 100 floor dungeon? Its the most adorable thing yet. Most adorable thing ever, nothing else mattered. <3 <3 <3

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Hee hee, got a few knocked down!

Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors:

I got this as my xmas gift. I had no idea what to expect when I saw the cover. But apparently the genre was definitely for me. All about mystery, puzzles and a plot to follow from 8 (technically more) people. Not only that, it got 5 extra endings to boot.

So yeah I fired it up without knowing a clue what to expect going in. What I got a nifty intro and a lot of suspense going on. And what awesome sprite animations too.

First puzzle was easy enough but yet scary enough to get you started with a hint of being rushed as you noticed your own room is being flooded.

Without spoiling everything, the characters you meet are part of why you go through any door since they're assigned with specific numbered bracelets that allows them to form a digital root in pair of three to five people through one door. And yes, there's plenty of rooms and doors and puzzles.

And I went about to complete it too. I knew that first ending wasn't enough. I NEEDED MORE. That's the down/positive side of this game. The endings seemed... so abrupt and it just ends. But fortunately it throws you for the loop regarding the characters you have chosen to go with (or rather which doors you chosen to go through). It definitely kept the game fresh and interesting in several playthroughs. Not only that, you get the speedy text option where you can blitz through text that you've seen before and it'd stop at that you haven't read. Nifty, too bad they couldn't do the same for puzzles though. But its still so awesome enough for me to be able to solve on my own.

So it was truly worth to complete this at the very least to get the most enjoyment out of the game really. Highly recommend for mystery, puzzle and text adventure lovers.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn:

Man yeah, this game rocked. The real reason why I took up the Wii to marathon on. I just finished the prequel to this a while ago. And that game had left me unsettled and wanting MORE for more plot and more awesome tactical endeavors with my favorite units again. And it fulfilled that promise with so much more.

This game was the biggest fire emblem yet I had ever played. With 72 characters to learn/love/converse with in 37 tactical segments to boot! I adore this game so much over the series thus far. It enabled you to take charge on very weak units while learning/adjusting to tactics again from other genres to take up powerful units and still own several chapters with. Really, this game gave you a real freedom to not be all that concerned with leveling all of your characters other besides your own favorites or the ones that you would have to level up with eventually anyway.

The plot was great and interesting, the characters were all great and interesting. ;D And yes, I went on EASY MODE. Apparently, easy mode US is actually normal for japanese version. :\ No idea why but personally that's what I recommend anyway just to enjoy the game and not worry too much about losing your favorite units to bullshit moves. Like I do thanks to my impatience... but thankfully greatly rewarded for finishing within 10 turns with lots of bonus exp that you can distribute inbetween chapters. Better yet you can save inbattle and you can definitely do a lot more stuff in this game like forging to checking out other stuff.

Anyway anyway, greatest fire emblem so far. I'm just now can only be let down with some later weak installments. (I'm looking at you Shadow Dragon) I'm so glad I took this up early after finishing the GCN marathon. It definitely made the Wii worthwhile playing on.

Last Window: The Secret of Cape West:

This was a b-day gift. Enjoyable text adventure with several stylus tricks in it. But not a whole lot. Like with Hotel Dusk you learn how to converse with a character and see through their weak talking points and get them to spill their guts to you in hyde fashion.

I loved Hotel Dusk for their pretentious dark overtones but really, I liked the conversations between characters more of all. And of course exploring and figuring out how to solve a puzzle by interacting with an object (Phoenix Wright style too).

Didn't think I could complete this without at least playing through 3 times for several different outcomes of a conversation with a character (and what to do with that 1000 dollar check). Great little gem imho. Not worth the price though, I'd suggest a rental. Its a real shame that this game was only available in PAL region, and could only imagine how much of a hassle it was to import it when its that small of a game.

FELIPE NO

What are you guys doing~! Christ, I dunno what happened but I'm a machine in the month of may. It helps that some of these are darn short. And due to that... I'll just leave at short reviews for now. I can rehash it in a pm/backloggery if you wish to know more.

Portal 2 - Awesomeness all around. Meets expectations and more.

Vagrant Story - Took a while to get into, but I played this a decade ago but lost 5 hours in (against a dragon SOB) and thanks to Q's challenge, I picked this up again and hacked my way through without a problem. o.o' If I didn't have the guide to help me find my ground (jesus), I'd had thought this game was a bit overrated.

Persona - PSP version, nifty barebones starter SMT or a sequel from the snes SMT games etc. I liked it for what it had, most definitely appreciate the additions that Atlus added to it to make it easier. The automap for instance is a god send. But yeah like I said, its very barebones rpg and there's not a whole lot of content other than just personas and dungeon crawling.

Rhapsody - PSX version, beaten it in the same day. If I have heard that this was THAT short, I'd have played it decade ago at least. Its adorable and incredibly easy jrpg with cute overload inside. What caught my attention was the detail to the dialog. <3 Atlus forever.

Astonishia Story - I thought the sprite work was incredible (along with Popolocrois) but the negative dialog along with digs at piracy, wonky battle system (and unnecessarily too at that) AND a shit rationale ending was putting this game at a negative. But I pushed it along anyway just to finish it for Crimson Gem Saga. Both games aren't that long anyway.

Etrain Odyssey - Incredible. SD got into this and was obsessed with the first two for a while and because of the singular save system, I didn't have access to it for a while. And we were considering to sell them, and because I haven't tried it, I'm glad we didn't right away! I enjoyed this because it made for an excellent time waster inbetween errands when you are mostly exploring and grinding. Reminds me again why I love Dark Spire and the like so much.

Lost in Shadow - A belated b-day present with knowing that its going to be neat in concept. What I got was a game born out of Limbo and Ico combined. I'm still unsure what to make of the game, other than that it is just neat to play but the ending and the repetitive floors (65 of them in total) will leave you a little jilted.

LEGO Star Wars - SD and I were co-oping this for a while. We picked it up again because we had a couple of reasons to do so, to beat it and to sell it. Turns out its rather messy at some parts and yet charming in others. I still didn't like how you should enter that part in free mode with a character to unlock a lot of things. But at least its out of the way now.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Vemp

Here we go again!
Resident Evil 5

Holy shit, are you me. I just fucking pick this up too recently.

I've been a nice string of games lately!

Dishonored, Far Cry 3, The Walking Dead, annnd Resident Evil 5 in a span of 2 weeks lol.

Dishonored - Great stealth game, he rented it out for me knowing that I loved Deus Ex: HR very much, and I can tell you that my expectations were met with this game. I'm still sour on the game be very buggy with detection and its difficult to get Ghost (no detection). It'd appear to be meaty but after hearing that you could just murder everyone and finish it half of the time you could do it in stealth or not collect upgrades all that much for the stealth. I'm just glad I didn't roll that way. Stealth for life!

Far Cry 3 - Hyped to heck when I hear you can kill bears to komodo dragons lmao. But yeah, I got warned beforehand about its laughable plot. White boy going in and be a king of the natives yeah right. I ignored the story and just went for the gameplay. I really enjoyed exploring the islands for the 100% ingame progress. Collecting relics allows you to find hidden awesome passages that were created to reach these. Also, that Vaas character is so awesome.

The Walking Dead - James played this first and was all like OMG... OMG... I'm gonna be all depressed now ;___________; I just had to wonder lol. Of course I'm impressed with the wide array of choices and all but its misleadingly still on a linear path though. IE you'll end up with the same last 3 or 4 characters at the end. Anyway, because of THAT, I can feel that its mostly forced my hand to pick the choices I had to agree with best just because I want to see more extra scenes. It may not a big deal or whatever, but I hate the fact that these characters a little of a throw away type though. Save Clemetine though!

But at the end, it definitely got me hyped for Season 2 at least. The writing is quite decent. Just don't go in expecting "choose your adventure" type though.

Resident Evil 5 - After Far Cry 3 and TWD so close to each other, its only natural I just had to play this right away and beat it the next day lol. About time too, I think I was so turned off from 2-3 mission (where you fucking shoot down that stupid giant from the jeep) I just put it down the first time I played it. This time around obviously I've done better and saw the gem this game was. Its fun when hunting for treasures in mind because they're just everywhere in neat spots to find. But yeah after beating the game and attempting to do it again I kinda saw how "corridorish" this game was. :\ And then finding out that the points for unlimited ammo for ONE gun maxed upgraded is about the amount of one playthrough. So yeah I gave up on that. It was quite fun when it lasted however... even its only 12 hours worth.

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Deadly Premonition The Director's Cut

This game pretty much flew past my radar and I'd never had played it if it didn't become a cult following. Twin Peaks happened the same way too. I've never heard of it until it had became a cult following. So I had this game coming via rental, and I made a point to watch Twin Peaks before I played this.

30 episodes later, while I'm completely in the void of where David Lynch had left off with that god damn Bob ending, this game can appease me somewhat.

Definitely a lot of references are made, if anything to pop culture in the 80s and Twin Peaks.

Like in Twin Peaks, the protagonist is a FBI agent with a split personality (Zach) with a questionable investigative method arriving in a small town with an array of unique characters. You arrive there to find out what happened to the town's young beautiful maiden being murdered and then crucified on a tree. While also investigating other murders' common link; the red seeds which is found on this girl's body as well.

First off, this game couldn't get away with a lot of negative press. You notice right away the subpar graphics in this game that could be outdated back to ps2 era at least. People also bitched about the clunky controls that reminds you of ps1's Resident Evils. Slow to react, slow to change animation, slow loading times, the works. They also bitched about the terrible timing of music in places too. I'm sure there's more too.

Secondly, this game had received the most polarizing review according to World Guinness Records. In other words, on the flip side, this is the greatest horror adventure game had been ever made. The plot, the characters, the little details of timing of their routines as well as the world you're on. It was developed with love obviously, you cannot go by a day without finding something new! You could sneak a peek at these characters of their daily lives and learn something new about them daily. And then the main plot. At first, it seemed to run as your typical mill run murder story and then it just quickly de-evolves into something crazier. Just like Twin Peaks. Amazing. Just amazingly good and bad at the same time.

York, the main character was fantastic and I appreciated his interactions with other characters. Followed by Emily, Thomas and George.

The game has 50 trading cards for you to get, as well as 50 side quests. There's also 6? or so combat reruns that rewards you with better weapons and/or trading cards. The game admittedly have a small world that pretty much seemed like a deserted landscape but if anything, it offers a sense of realistic scenario of a small town.

I love it. It only took me 25 hours to find and get everything out of this game. PS3 version has only one difficulty which is on easy/normal. And this game is ridiculously easy once you get the infinite submachine gun. Outside of that, your combat experience can vary due to their slow/unpredictable teleporting nature and your melee having varying reach to hit them. I opted for submachine gun since it juggles them and keeps them at bay per hit. If I wanted to go hard mode, you could make a sticking point to stick with breakable melee weapons.

You also can wear different colored suits, a few of them can impact your health or pulse meters. Pulse meter goes up when you run or hold your breath and when you max that out, you get sluggish slow. Rarely I ever worry about that except in that game of Darts. Health is pretty much inconsequential when you get that submachine gun and keep the shadows (enemies) at bay away from you. You do need to worry about sleep/eating though. You can also smoke to pass time but you'll lose out on food/sleep meter. The only time you'd ever worry about those meters is when you're sleeping to pass a day into certain weather conditions you want that certain characters would show up at a specific time and place.

Because of that, the guide is needed to find what you need to find. Weather permitting, you can be sure to find people at home during rainy times while its the opposite otherwise.

I thought I mention this game in the slew of games I've been beating lately because again, this game needs more recognition.

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