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

ONE DAY, GUYS. ONE DAY AND YOUR DREAMS SHALL COME TRUE.

(oh my god skills you are the GAYEST)

what's that? I can't hear you between all the mouthfuls of wata'melon

Oh really? I'm surprised you could hear anything, what with all the dicks in your ears

they make good earmuffs. you just jealous

See how jealous I am when I erase your achievements

only the jealousest, I can see your true feelings. You can't hide.



HEY POPO, WANNA RACE?



There's nowhere I can't reach.

So, returning this thread to normal, I played a game recently called Paper Mario. It's pretty old (N64 RPG) but I had only played the sequel, The Thousand-Year Door many moons ago. Bought it day one and marathoned it in a race to the finish with Jenneriku/Bunny Love (he won ;_;, but just barely!). It's rare to play something so simple and yet so amazingly fun at the same time. Since I had this Wii sitting around gathering dust I figured I'd grab the first off the Virtual Console and see what it was all about.

Paper Mario:

First off, it's easy to see where they got a lot of the ideas they refined in TTYD from here. The partner list is huge (8 compared to 6 in TTYD), there's a bit less overall in terms of side-quests and extra stuff to do, but a lot of the fun concepts like the dialogue and character interaction are still there.

The partners are all useful in their own way and give you a pretty great deal of choices as far as battles go. It sucks that BP maxes out at 30 though. I can't remember if that was the limit in TTYD or not.

Overall each chapter had plenty of laughs and the game never felt like it dragged on or got boring. The Ninja Koopas, The Shy Guys, the most uncool cool Latiku ever, oh and Jr. Troopa too. Stuff that just made the game a riot from start to finish.

Koops is the best Koopa out of both games though. Accept no substitutes. Parakarry was pretty neat though.

::Bow ohoho laugh::

Debating on whether or not I should give Super Paper Mario a shot. I hear it's kind of convoluted compared to the first two.

Oh, and there was Transformers: War For Cybertron which I was recently gifted. It's a pretty solid title and worth it for just how quotable the game is. In essence, War For Cybertron is best summed up by this cutscene. I can't put it any better than that.

Most amazing jew boots

I should probably just tack on Metroid: Other M to this list.

Yeah, um. Even avoiding all the hyperbole bullshit, it's easily a pretty shit game. Once you start taking it in the context of other Metroids though, it becomes damn near vomit inducing. Avoid at pretty much all costs. Spend the money picking up Prime Trilogy if you can find a copy.

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

Originally Posted by Tails

Debating on whether or not I should give Super Paper Mario a shot. I hear it's kind of convoluted compared to the first two.

Yeah, it was a mixed bag. Definitely the least solid of the series. Main problems being balance issues and the dimension switching mechanic being a little sparse. But it's still worth playing, it's an inventive and fun game. Don't know how much it's going for nowadays, but you wouldn't regret sinking some time into it.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I've just completed my first game from the big three of current consoles:

Spoiler:

Castle of Shikigami III (from a completionist point of view)

Castle of Shikigami III is a shoot'em up that was released for the Wii and remains a hard sought after title in Canada. The game mainly seen a wide release in the United States, but when it was first released the only places you could find it for sale was at Future Shop. You could also rent it at Rogers Video. It is a very solid bullet hell shoot'em up and it is finally a first half decent translation for the Castle of Shikigami series. It finally got a good publisher, and it actually has some pretty decent voice acting because anything is better than Castle of Shikigami II (shudder).

On to completing this game. With most shoot'em ups. They are fairly short. I will be one to admit. I'm not good at the genre, but I enjoy the genre for what it is. I cannot OCC any shoot'em up, the best I managed to do was to beat the game with two continues. Your average play through will run you a little over a half an hour. Despite the shortness of the game there is a lot and I mean a lot to unlock in this game.

In terms of completing this game. You literally have two main objectives. You need to unlock every piece of artwork in the game. You also need to unlock every character scenario. You need to try the game on every mode, and even try boss rush mode in which you need to defeat every boss one one credit. To do all this, and I wish I was kidding, you need to play the game at minimum 55 times. You heard right, 55 times you need to beat this game.

10 times to beat the game with each character on one player mode.

45 times to beat the game with every combination of the characters on two player mode, but you could play two players by yourself by playing dramatic change mode.

The character artwork gets unlocked during the beginning of the game, the ending of the game, the cut scenes before each level, and the interactions with the level boss. Every time the character shows a different pose, that pose is unlocked as a piece of art work. There is artwork for the bosses as well, since they can show different poses all depending on which characters fight them.

Character scenarios are pretty self explanatory, you need to beat the game with all characters on one player mode, and every character combination during 2 player or dramatic change mode.

Once the character scenarios and artwork are completed, give a try
to some of the different modes. Boss rush mode is actually pretty fun. Your going to need to play the game for a while especially if your not good at shoot'em ups, since you start off with a limited number of credits. Play the game enough and you'll eventually get access to free play.

It is a fairly solid shoot'em up with better voice acting. You will need to invest some time to fully complete. The bullet hell patterns may be intimidating at first, but the more you play it, the better you can remember some of the patterns. My two favorite characters are:

Nagano Ite
Roger Sasuke

It is a solid shoot'em up, and there are plenty of WTF, how in the fuck am I suppose to dodge this moments. Give it a try, if your into the genre.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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.

FELIPE NO

I've still not got 1,000 out of Oblivion, I need to bust through the Fighters guild at some point to wrap that up although my character is a little more extreme than yours with a game-breaking suit of 100% chameleon gear which allows you to stand directly in front of someone and punch them to death if you so wish. Still, the thieves guild and dark brotherhood quests are fucking epic and I did those before I made the silly armour so there was still some challenge in them. I didn't really read into the game much before I started playing so made the foolish error of picking the skills I wanted to be good at as my class skills. You're much better off picking ones you'll never use so you can level up the skills you do want to use without actually going up in levels as like you say, that just makes the monsters tougher. It is a good game though and I'm a touch surprised they never made a sequel yet. Although the locations are a bit repetitive, they're more varied than Fallout 3's.

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

I am going back to the 16 bit era, to play a game I've beaten several times, but never ever completed.

Spoiler:

Donkey Kong Country (From a Completionist point of view)

Donkey Kong Country was one of those games that pretty much every kid had. I remember playing this game countless times, trying to complete it. I got exposed to Donkey Kong Country from Nintendo Power, when I received a VHS tape in the mail that showed me what Donkey Kong Country was all about. It even went as so far to show some of the many secrets that the game has to offer.

The Donkey Kong Country series has always remained one of my favorite platformers. Even though I never beat the second one or even played the third one. When I did play Donkey Kong Country I use to spend so much time trying to find all the secret levels, but no matter how much I tried I could never find them all.

This weekend, I decided to dig out my snes and finally complete this game once and for all.

The game in itself is excellent platforming action. The game is fairly straight forward in the sense that as you finish one level it brings you to the next level. You have no fears of ever missing any of the levels since you need to play and pass them all to finish the game.

The true completionist aspect of this game is the numerous amount of bonus levels that are found throughout the game. Some of the levels can have numerous bonus level while some levels do not have any. In order to get 101% on this game you have to find every bonus area in each level.

How do you know if you have found all the bonus areas in the specified level. It is actually quite easy. When your on the World Map and you get ready to go to a level for example:

Oil Drum Alley

If you get all the bonus areas in the level.

It will look like this:

Oil Drum Alley!

The exclamation point shows that you got all the bonus levels in that particular level. If it still looks the same then you haven't got all the bonus levels in the game. Bonus levels are everywhere, and can be incredibly well hidden. You may have to break hidden walls, jump to hard to reach areas, or the entrances to these bonus levels can be invisible and only by seeing a peculiarly placed item it will give you a rough idea that something is there.

With any platformer, having any extra lives is a must since the later levels in this game can be incredibly hard. Make sure to take any opportunity to collect as many bananas as possible, and make sure you get the golden statues of your helper animals. Get three statues of the same animal and you'll be transported to a bonus area, where you need to collect as many items as you can. For every 100 you get an extra life and no matter which bonus animal level you end up in, there will be a giant gold statues of that specified animal that will act as 2x multiplier that will help you get more lives.

With the new Donkey Kong Country game coming out for the Wii in the next couple of weeks, I recommend anybody give this excellent platformer a try before you play the new one. When it came out for the first time it remained one of the most beautiful platformers that had ever graced a video game console. In completing it, I still enjoyed playing it now, as what I did back then.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Well, this doesn't qualify as a specific game being completed and reviewed, but its a very big gaming accomplishment of mine.

Spoiler:

I would like to think that I have officially completed my Domestic North American Anime Style Game Collection for the Sega Saturn.

YouTube Video

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

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!

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

Well tonight I have finally completed a game that I've been playing off and on for the last two years.

Spoiler:

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (From a Completionist point of view)

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is a strategy tactics games released for the Nintendo DS in 2008 and it is the fourth game for the advance wars series. If you ask me it has been the best advance wars game I've played because the game is actually incredibly well balanced.

When it comes to completing this game, boy are you ever in for a chore. I've been playing this game since I first picked it up and finally I managed to finish everything on the game tonight. There are three main objectives you need to do when it comes to completing this game.

1.) First objective is to finish campaign mode and get an s-rank in every story mission and training mission. This doesn't take as long as what you might think. S rank is based up your scores on Power, Technique, and Speed. As long as your total score is 300 or higher, you'll score a s rank for that specified mission. When you start the game you do not have access to a lot of the training missions but as you complete specific story missions, more and more training missions will open up. Always keep in mind that you want to destroy as much of the enemy as possible, while limiting the amount of damage to your own units and you need to do it in a timely fashion to make sure you get that coveted s rank.

2.) Second objective is to finish every map in free battle mode. This will take a while, but if you have a friend you should be able to finish every map in free battle mode. I took the liberty of finishing every map against the computer instead of playing with a friend and just finishing every map quite easily. In free battle mode you have almost 200 maps you need to clear. If the title of the map is grayed out you have not beaten it. Once the title of the map is highlighted in white, you have finally defeated that required battle map. You have such a wide variety of maps such as classic, trial, 2p, 3p, and 4p. This can be the longest part to finish if your finishing it by yourself, if you have a friend you can do it a lot faster.

3.) Third objective is to get all 270 medals. This will take a lot of time, but there are ways of making it easier. The medals are divided into three sets. You get medals for the amount of units produced, for the amount of enemy units destroyed, and a whole bunch of generic requests such as (defeating the final boss ten times, number of times your sub has surfaced or dive, how many maps traded, how many multiplayer battles you've played, how many wi-fi battles you've played. As long as you keep getting medals your unlock all the badges in this game as well.

The units produced and enemy units destroyed medals are easy to obtain, you need to create and defeat 200 of each unit, but if you create your own map and change the layout in such a way, you can create however many units you wants, and you can also create create the enemy units you want to destroy.

Concerning the other generic requirements to get the other medals, if you finish everything in campaign mode you should have the majority of these medals. Just work on each requirement as you see necessary.

In the end, I consider Advance Wars: Days of Ruin my favorite advance wars game and you don't understand how happy I am to have this game completed. Until the next advance wars.

I was speaking idiomatically.

One good thing about all this downtime is that at least I'm getting quite a few games completed. Here is another one:

Spoiler:

U.N. Squadron (From a Completionist point of view)

U.N. Squadron is literally one of the best side scrolling shooters to ever grace the super nintendo system. It is actually one of those rare examples in which the snes version is actually better than the arcade version even though there are a lot of differences between the two.

In order to fully complete this game you need to play it four times. You need to play it three times on normal mode. One time for each of the three pilots. This game can be difficult, but with enough practice you can get incredibly good at it.

If you beat normal mode with each of the three pilots you get a little line of text regarding the character you beat the game with.

These are the three pilots that you can use to help you complete this game:

1.) Shin Kazama: He can level up his main gun faster than any of the other pilots.
2.) Mickey Simon: He can use special weapons in a larger quantity than any of the other pilots
3.) Greg Gates: He can recover faster than any of the other pilots.

You will have to use each of these pilots once during normal mode.

The last thing you need to do in order to consider this game fully completed. If you beat the game on Hard or Gamer mode without using continues to see a parade of Mobi-Chans spelling a message at the "Thanks for playing" screen.

It seems like a cheap cop-out, especially for playing the game on a harder difficulty, but I would recommend using Greg Gates due to his ability to recover from damage quickly. There is large contrast between hard and normal, enemies will fire more bullets and bosses will be that much harder to kill.

It will take a lot of practice, but UN Squadron is one of those games that I will never grow tired up because of its addictive game-play and a stellar soundtrack.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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.

FELIPE NO

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.

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

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Sorry for the delay guys. Even though I had completed this game a while back I never had the chance to write about it. I actually completed it again because i love the game so much.

Spoiler:

Bangai-O Spirits (From a Completionist Point of View)

Bangai-O spirits is literally one of my all time favorite games for the DS. It is a shoot'em up that was released by Treasure in 2008.

In order to fully complete this game you only need to do one simple thing. You need to beat all 167 levels that this game has to offer. That is pretty much the only simple thing about this game. You will never play a game in which you can die so fast, so quickly, and so often. It is the challenge that this game portrays is what makes the so addictive and so fun.

You have 167 levels spread over three types of level designs:

Treasure's Best (There are a total of 27 stages that are very attack heavy stages.)

Puzzle Stages (There are a total of 18 stages that have puzzle or maze elements.)

Other Stages (There are a total of 122 stages that have various fighting elements. The tutorial stages are included with the other stages.)

Throughout, the game you have various types of missiles in order to destroy your enemies. You have long range weapons such as bounce missiles, homing missiles, napalm missiles, and break missiles. Break missiles are some of my favorite missiles to use because it can cut through enemies incredibly easy.

You also have the opportunity to use EX attacks which allow you to mix missile types. EX attacks can send a lot of missiles into various directions are incredibly useful when dealing with a lot of enemies or enemy missiles on the screen.

EX attacks are not always attack based. They have other uses that can be used to get through some of the stages in this game such as Reflect and Freeze.

Freeze you can pause the action for up to three seconds which can be incredibly useful when getting through some very tight spots in the game.

My personal favorite is Reflect in which you can use it to reflect enemy missiles back at the enemy which are incredibly useful when dealing with the most annoying enemy in the game which are Longai-O's.

It is an awesome game and one game that every DS owner should have. It is not a hard game to complete but be prepared to die quite a lot.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Oh hey so I got bored of the Arena in Resonance of Fate and decided to play Fable 2 instead, which I've more or less beaten the arse out of now. Still got a couple of achievements to pick up but no more than a couple of hours worth and I'm going to resign myself to not getting the multiplayer ones (Unless someone wants to hook a brother up with some hero dolls and the trading and combat one).

Anyway:

Spoiler:

First things first, easy game is helluva easy, as in comedically so. I've not died once nor come even close to dying. I bought the GotY edition which comes pre-loaded with Knothole Island and the Future thingy. I did the first quest of each before the main quest of the game even kicked off properly and that was the only challenge of the whole game, beating those with crappy, rusty weapons. Of course once I'd done the first bit of Knothole Island the game threw legendary weapons at me, instantly ending any challenge the game might possibly have had. Money is never an issue in the game as you earn rent from houses you own even when the game is turned off so if you play for a short while every evening, each time you turn the thing on you have enough money for a couple more houses and it doesn't take long to earn enough to buy pretty much every house in the game and all the other crap you could ever want for. I chose the money option at the end of the game and got a million gold, to add to the four million I already had...

The fights are easy even without the freely available legendary weapons and there's no hint of a decent boss fight anywhere in the game. I've not managed to beat the Arena thng record yet but only because I've only gone through it once and didn't realise you could use the flame jets in one room to clear it much faster until it was too late. Treasure chests are kinda well hidden but with Knothole Island you can make your dog a level 5 treasure hunter pretty much right off the bat so it's pretty much impossible to miss any chests or dig spots. I'm still a few silver keys short and a couple of gargoyles but I don't see it being too tough to track down the last few.

So the economy is a joke, the fights are easy to the point of being a joke and you can't miss any of the treasure so what is the point of the game?

Well essentially it's just good fun. I went, as I always do in this kind of game, down the pure evil route. There aren't actually that many morality choices in the quests themselves, you get most of your evil points by robbing houses and setting comedy high rents. Oh, and sacrificing a string of wives at the shadow temple. It's fun running into a town and having everyone run away screaming though. The quests are all pretty formulaic but the scripting is amusing enough as a rule. That you can kill everything without thinking about it makes your character feel suitably god-like compared to the general populace, a bit like playing a really focussed Sith Lord in KOTR 2 (My last character killed Darth Treya in two force chokes). The whole thing is basiaclly a no-brainer action game aimed at people who are really crap at action games. It's a nice change to have played an "rpg" that didn't take 300 hours for a change too!

Achievements-wise, there's not much that requires anything more than standard story-following to get. You need to save before the end and reload a couple of times to save yourself playing through three times and there are a few things you wouldn't do by accident but they aren't in any way difficult and I'm up to 950 without a guide, the only things I might possibly look up will be if I get stuck on a gargoyle or silver key or two.

All in all a decent enough game if you want something light-hearted and not too taxing and it's dead simple to get a huge AP haul from it if that's your bag.

I've heard that Fable 3 is a bit shit compared to 2 so I won't bother picking that up. Next I might go back and finish off Resonance of Fate or I'll play Arkham Asylum. I did buy Mass Effect 2 but that can wait until I've finished my ultra-nasty-bastard playthrough of the first one.

Edit: Oh yeah, I'm also playing through FFIX again on a PS emulator but I'm sure you all already know it's the best in the series so no need to lecture about that here.

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

Hey guys, I just added two more snes games to my retired pile.

Spoiler:

Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest (From a Completionist point of view.)

The funny with regards to Final Fantasy Mystic is that it is game that people either really love or really despite. Its mot commonly known as Final Fantasy USA, Final Fantasy for Idiots, and Final Fantasy for Dummies.

I'm actually one of those few people that actually love the game because when I was starting out in the rpg genre this was actually the first rpg I ever finished. I know that's not saying much because it is incredibly easy but I felt pretty proud beating my first rpg.

When it comes to completing Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest there are two major things that you need to do.

1.) The first thing you need to do is finished every battlefield that the world map has to offer. You can not roam anywhere on the map. Your destinations are already designated to you. In each battlefield you get to fight ten battles. Once they're all beaten, you either get experience, gold, or even an item. Once you've defeated each battlefield, you'll get the message Already Cleaned Out.

2.) The second major thing you need to do is to collect every weapon, every piece of armor, and every permanent item in the game. You can get these things in different ways.

Throughout the game you can find two different kinds of treasure chests. You have wooden treasure chests and you have metal treasure chests.

Wooden treasure chests carry consumable items such as heal potions, cure potions, bombs, arrows, refreshers, and seeds. Wooden chests can be found in both towns and dungeons and they can also be easily exploited. If you already opened up a wooden chest in a town or dungeon and you leave the town or dungeon back onto the world cap. The wooden chest can be opened again. You can use this trip to amass 99 cure potions and 99 heal potions incredibly easily.

Metal Treasure chests always carry permanent items such as a weapons, a piece of armor or an item that you need in order to progress the story. Metal treasure chests can be found in some of the towns and you can always find at least one in every dungeon in the game.

You need to open every metal treasure chest in order to collect every permanent item in the game. You can also get some of the other permanent items in the game by completing battlefields, buying weapons and armor from certain individuals in town, and some of them will be given to you in order to advance the story.

Once we have finished every battlefield and collected every weapon, every piece of armor, and every other important story item. We can know go ahead and defeat the final boss. The final boss is known as the doom king and it seems the customary that for a game so easy the final boss should be easy as well. The Doom King is an undead creature so all you have to do to send a cure spell his way. The cure spell does 5 digit damage to the boss, and you can pretty much kill him in a few hits.

Final Fantasy Mystic quest is a fairly easy game to complete and you should be able to do it within 8 to 12 and sometimes even faster than that. I do love the game for its simplicity and i think its an excellent game to introduce a young child to the rpg genre. Definitely check it out.

Spoiler:

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (From a Completionist point of view.)

With finally taking the time of completing the first Donkey Kong Country, I decided to delve into the second game of the Donkey Kong Country series. it is a series that I had played before, but I never ever beat the final boss nor did I do everything that the game had to offer.

When it comes to completing this game, it uses the somewhat same formula of the original donkey kong country series with a few minor additions.

As you go through the game. You need to get 102% in order to consider this game fully completed.

We do that by finding every bonus stage that each level has to offer. Unlike the original donkey kong country in which finishing the bonus level will give you lives, letters, gold statues and other things. The bonus levels in Donkey Kong Country 2 will give you kremlin coins. There are a total of 75 krem coins. The majority of them you can find in the bonus stages and you get a krem coin for every boss you defeat.

You use 15 kremlin coins at a time to open levels of the lost world throughout the game. You pay 15 krem coins to Klubba and he'll grant you access to the lost world.

The other thing you need to do is grab another bunch of items known as DK coins. There are a total of 40 DK Coins and there is one in every level. There are even DK coins located in the lost world levels.

Once you defeat Kaptain K. Rool in his flying fortress and when you defeat him in the Lost World after you collect all 75 Krem Coins and you collect all 40 DK coins. Then the game is considered fully completed.

This game definitely has a good spike in difficulty because I found the difficulty dramatically harder than the original donkey kong country. I just want to say on record, the last level before you fight Kaptain K. Rool in the lost world known as Animal Antics has pissed me off quite a lot. This is a level in the game that I consider the hardest level in the game because it is a level in which you use all of your animal buddies. There is a section of the game in which you use your parrot in a vine area in which the wind is blowing you back and forth and it is a level I have wasted a whole ton of lives just trying to beat it.

Overall, Donkey Kong Country 2 is known as the best of the Donkey Kong Games for the Super Nintendo and with good reason. Just expect a good spike in difficulty, but that's not going to stop it from being an excellent platformer on the Super Nintendo.

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

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

I was speaking idiomatically.

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.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Donkey Kong Country 2 was awesome and the first game I ever really properly completed, getting 102% out of it. I found the game became much easier when you realise that the timing of almost all the jumps is to make them without waiting, i.e. if you jump as soon as you reach the edge of the platform you'll miss whatever the obstacle was, it's like the game was made for speed runs.

How ya doing, buddy?

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.

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

This one is dedicated to Philia:

Spoiler:

Flower (From a Completionist point of view)

Flower was a game that I had known about for a very long time, but it was only within the last month that I finally decided to see what all the hype was about and decided to download it. To be honest this game had surpassed any and all expectations that I had for it.

I have never played that had such a unique tranquility about it. This game didn't need dialogue, it didn't need a complex story, and it didn't need action and explosions. I never played a game in which I actually felt relaxed playing it. I never felt tense it was just such a relaxing game to play and to be honest when I was playing it for the first time I wasn't interested in completing it. To be honest I wish I could stay in the worlds as long as I could. I have a particular fondness for the windmill level and the night level (3rd and 4th levels.)

i played through the game the first time not caring about getting everything but just enjoying the game for what it was and knowing that nothing could ever be missed in the game and that you could go back and complete any of the levels at any time. After the initial playthrough it was time to get down to serious business and get this game 100% completed.

With regards to completing this game there is mainly one thing you need to do. You need to get every trphy that this game has to offer. Some of the trophies can be incredibly easy to get such as:

1.) Spend ten minutes in the room with the flowers without even moving
2.) Don't play for a week, and then play
3.) Illuminate a pond
4.) Ride the windmill 7 times
5.) Once you complete a level, watch the ending credits of the level before you go back to the room.

However, like any game that has trophies there are ones that can be fairly difficult:

1.) Awaken the entire city, which can be easily missed if you don't watch what your doing.
2.) In every level there are three secret flowers and you need to get all three secret for each of the 6 levels.
3.) You need to bloom 10,000 flowers which can take up quite a bit of time.
4.) You need to activate every credit in the ending sequences of the game, another trophy that can be easily missed if your not too careful .

The most annoying trophy that you will need to get throughout the entire game is in the 5th level in which you need to journey to the city unscathed without taking any damage since there are electrical towers all over the place. The biggest difficulty that most people have with this level is in the third section where debris is falling from the sky and sometimes its not always easily avoidable. It is actually quite easy to get through the first two electrified sections, the biggest thing you need to do when it comes to getting through the last section of the 5th level is too simply ride the wind (do not speed up) and stay high up in the air and you should get to the city unscathed.

In the end you need to get all 14 trophies to consider this game fully completed, but I urge you on your first playthrough of this game. Don't worry about getting the trophies or accomplishments this game has to offer. Enjoy the game the first time around for whats its worth, and then get the accomplishments after. So thank you Philia for introducing me to such a great game with a beautiful and tranquil atmosphere and it was well worth all the time I spent completing it.

How ya doing, buddy?

I need to start abusing this thread, since I have shit for memory and don't remember a lot of details about games a few years later. I may actually start working backwards on recent titles.

Dead Nation:

The game originally came out in December, but about 2 or 3 weeks ago they finally came out with a patch that added online voice chat, different color lasers for the two players, an in-game brightness setting which it desperately needed (couldn't see shit captain), and some minor other things so I'm playing this post patch. It's done by the guys who did Super Stardust HD which I've always heard good things about but never played. As a twinstick zombie shooter it was actually pretty enjoyable. On Normal it was a pretty good length (about 5 hours) for it's intensity level which ramps up nicely.

They give you a good amount of weapons and tools that you unlock as you progress then upgrade with money found in-game. About halfway through the game encourages you to abuse the usable items like Flares and Grenades as they're cheap enough that buying more at the constant shops is negligible. On Normal though you can use the default Assault Rifle which has infinite ammo for the majority of the game. I kept expecting it to get harder than it did. Messing around with some of the later weapons like the hilarious Blade Cannon was pretty awesome.

The "story" and "dialogue" were ridiculous though. Apparently the characters are hardcore commandos who can kill thousands of zombies and tranverse huge areas on foot, survive car crashes, and fly helicopters. Also the ending is ridiculous and sort of nullifies the whole game. The artwork isn't bad though, and the music (what's there) is fine.

I'd say I only had two major complaints, the first being that the default weapon desperately needed to be automatic, or have that button press to be optional; I probably literally pushed R1 about ten thousand times across that 5 hours. Second, even with the in-game brightness options that they added, game is still DARK AS SHIT. This actually works really well for atmosphere, but really shitty for gameplay. It's also not only just that it's dark, but the zombies do a good job of mixing in well with the environment art, so sometimes even when it wasn't dark I'd start getting hit by a zombie that was right next to me which I literally couldn't see. Also, I wish the game "paused" when cycling through weapons or items. Mapping them to the D-pad works well, but late in the game when you have a bunch of different things and I'm getting mobbed by a ton of enemies being able to switch to the item I want without getting destroyed would have been helpful.

Overall the game was pretty good though; I think if it had been on 360 so I could have actually played it with anyone on my friends list we would have gotten some good mileage out of it, as there's a fair amount of unlocks and other things I certainly didn't get.

There's nowhere I can't reach.