
After about 100 hours, I've finally rolled credits on Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth.
For the last four or five months, I've been stuck in a grind trying to finish three very long, uneven games: Rebirth, Persona 3, and Red Dead Redemption 2. They are all worthy games in many ways but contain lulls and low points. Out of the three, Rebirth definitely has the most variability between the highs and the lows.
To begin with, I took the advice from this forum and focused on the main storyline, ignoring the open world and all the side missions. I found the story fun and the combat quite good once you grok how you're supposed to approach it. Unfortunately, by the end of the second area, I was under-levelled and began struggling with the boss fights, so I was forced to start engaging with the optional content, and man, that part is rough.
Some of it was fine. Exploring the open world was interesting enough. The piano rhythm game, in particular, was quite good, giving you a chance to interact with the classic OST. But so much of it is terrible. For a game which has clearly had enormous care, passion, and resources poured into it, it's baffling how much bad and frustrating crap made it in. Manoeuvring your chocobo sucks. Most of the minigames range from bland to awful. And every time I heard the chirp indicating f*cking Chadley was back, I wanted to break the controller.
Pushing through all that crap was a genuine chore, but the main story made it worth the effort. Yes, the storytelling is a muddled, confusing, poorly paced mess, which makes it a faithful adaptation of the original. But it has all the epic bombast of classic Final Fantasy, lovingly rendered with cutting-edge technology. And by the time I reached the ending, I was genuinely moved. Even a goofy, absurd story like this can achieve a kind of transcendence when you've been through 100 hours of struggle together with these characters. And adding in the emotional weight of 25 years of canonisation of the original game, it's hard not to get a little choked up when you get to that scene at the end.
Ahhh you are making me itch... the oracle of season and ages... i think i must soonish
Finished Returnal. Or at least I got the first ending. Overall I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I think the individual biome runs are a tad too long for me to grind out the additional endings. For now at least - I liked it enough that I might go back to it down the line to hunt for secrets.
Also finished the Castlevania Advance Collection - Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance, and Aria of Sorrow. (Also, Dracula X is thrown in.)
It's post Symphony of the Night, so you have rpg progression systems and loot - not entirely successfully. The equipment drops feel largely superfluous, but Circle of the Moon and Aria of Sorrow lock spell abilities behind random card/soul drops, and especially in Circle of the Moon they can have a huge impact on difficulty. It's not a great feeling when you realize you were having so much trouble with an enemy because you didn't grind a particular enemy until it gave you the defensive shield ability card.
Harmony of Dissonance does none of that, which is why it ended up being my favourite, even if it has one annoyingly obtuse progression point.
And then I played Dracula X and it made the three GBA games look so much better. I has some great sprite work, particularly in the opening stage, but the final confrontation with Dracula is in a room of pillars, bigger than the screen, where he teleports around chucking fireballs where one hit can knock you into a pit a make you start over.
Having finished Metaphor:Refantazio, I finally got around to picking up and finishing The Return of the Obra Dinn. What a game! Teasing everything out of the vignettes of the crew's final moments while the catchy (and sometimes jaunty?) soundtrack played was fantastic, and definitely stretched some brain muscles. I will definitely be picking up and playing the next thing Lucas Pope releases sooner the next time around.
Having finished Metaphor:Refantazio, I finally got around to picking up and finishing The Return of the Obra Dinn. What a game! Teasing everything out of the vignettes of the crew's final moments while the catchy (and sometimes jaunty?) soundtrack played was fantastic, and definitely stretched some brain muscles. I will definitely be picking up and playing the next thing Lucas Pope releases sooner the next time around.
All right! That game is pure magic. A top 10 of all time for me.
I finished 13 Sentinels over the weekend. By the end it was a game that I was wading through rather than enjoying. Given how little meaningful interactivity there was in the game (and, of course, the ending), it was way too long. I could have done with 50% fewer branching paths, and a similar reduction in the number of tower defence battles.
As for the storyline... Well, it's hard to have anything new to say in science fiction, but the big reveal was basically
a combination of Earthsearch and Ender's Game
. However, by the time I got to it, I'd basically stopped caring. I didn't find the twists and turns of the story anywhere near as interesting as the writers clearly did.
This past week, I finished -KLAUS- on the Switch. Thanks to Spikeout for the recommendation!
-KLAUS- was a short puzzle-platformer (about 4.5 hours, per the in-game stats) with a couple of very creative twists. First, the main character (Klaus) is presented as self-aware, and quickly comes to understand that he's being controlled by outside forces; he "talks" to the player through text that appears on the screen. He knows the player can control him (at times) and the environment (at times), and can't talk back. This is a really smart concept that is played with, and exploited, in fascinating ways.
Second, without getting too deep into the story, there is a second controllable character with a different move set, and to get through different levels and puzzles, you need to work with them both and toggle between them. And, you can hold down ZL to move them both simultaneously, which is a fun twist.
The game also follows the pattern of frequent checkpoints, one-hit deaths, and instant restarts. While it is nowhere near as punishing as Celeste, and the platforming is not as intense, it is similarly tight and responsive. I'd recommend it to any fans of the genre and also to anyone looking for a short, thought-provoking game.
The game also follows the pattern of frequent checkpoints, one-hit deaths, and instant restarts. While it is nowhere near as punishing as Celeste, and the platforming is not as intense, it is similarly tight and responsive. I'd recommend it to any fans of the genre and also to anyone looking for a short, thought-provoking game.
This sounds intriguing. Celeste is waiting on my backlog, so I can't compare at the moment, but I love VVVVVV.
And while more arcade-y than platformer, I recommend Cyber Protocol for more checkpoint -> 1hko -> restart fun, and the soundtrack's got some pretty good synthwave.
I still have the final story mission to go, but I think I have a pretty solid opinion of Rage 2 now.
It's a pretty solid open world shooter with some fun abilities and weapons that takes a little too long to show off its strengths. Its campaign has a mix of fun and unique missions, along with a few that take place in visually uninteresting and repetitive areas. You start off with a couple weapons and a few basic abilities, but new weapons and powers are acquired by finding technologically advanced "arks" in the open world. There are resources to collect, perks to unlock, and guns and powers to level up, not to mention the ability to acquire a garage full of different vehicles to carry you around the open world. You can craft consumables, upgrade your health and damage with rare items, and wander a functional but somewhat forgettable open world.
The main issue with the game is nothing feels quite fleshed out enough. For example, you can acquire a bunch of different vehicles, but only your first vehicle can be upgraded with multiple weapons and abilities, so I don't understand why you'd want to use the other ones anyway. There are multiple factions and they have some lore attached to them, but you're not really given a reason to care who they are and what they want. If you're someone who despises "copy paste" open world activities, this game won't be for you.
That said, it's a game that basically leaves it up to the player to find the fun. The shooting starts out solid, and once you're able to combine that with upgraded movement abilities, deadly melee strikes, and a plethora of throwable weapons ranging from grenades to blades that can be curved around corners to robotic flying turrets, you can see how combat can be a fast paced ballet of gibs and destruction. There are convoys out in the open world to attack but... you can also completely ignore them.
You have to level up the NPCs who give you missions in order to get the next story mission, but how you do that is completely undirected and up to you. There are various open world activities that correspond to each NPC's area of expertise, and completing them will contribute towards leveling them up. Thankfully there's a good enough variety that even if you don't care for one type of activity, you can likely find others that work better for you. While the story doesn't itself engage with the open world much, you'll have to complete various open world locations in order to unlock subsequent story missions.
The writing starts out zany and over the top in a really fun way, but as the campaign progresses it loses its verve. There were some characters I expected to feature more prominently that unfortunately did not. It contributes to a feeling that the developers didn't quite have the time they needed to flesh everything out and really make it all sing.
Overall though, this is a fun time. If you're looking for a somewhat brainless shooter where you can blast mutants, punks, and fanatics, this will fit the bill nicely. It takes time to really show off its best parts in combat, but if you stick with it there's a good amount of fun to be had. I was going to make a concerted effort to avoid my completionist tendencies, but it turns out the game isn't compelling enough for that to really be a problem. If you're really moving through, you can probably roll credits somewhere between 15 and 20 hours.
Oh, I forgot to mention that though I played this on PC, I ended up playing most of the game with a controller. The keyboard bindings for your various powers, abilities, throwables, etc etc felt pretty awkward, especially in more chaotic fights. It was much easier to just use the controller, which the game was clearly designed for.
Just finished Astalon: Tears of the Earth and boy was it a fun romp. Did 100% map completion - it took some serious doing - and it was 98% enjoyable to accomplish. Fun little 8-bit style metroidvania with some interesting character-switching mechanics and lots of environmental puzzles. Might make the GOTY list for 2025.
I finally got around to playing and finishing Firewatch, a game I had avoided for a long time because some of the subject matter (dementia) hits very close to home for me.
I’m glad I finally played it. It’s a beautiful little game. Too bad that Campo Santo disappeared into Valve.
I finally got around to playing and finishing Firewatch, a game I had avoided for a long time because some of the subject matter (dementia) hits very close to home for me.
I’m glad I finally played it. It’s a beautiful little game. Too bad that Campo Santo disappeared into Valve.
Especially after the trailer for what was going to be their next game.
Ugh....I had almost bleached my brain and forgotten about In the Valley of Gods.
Well, I finished Curious Expeditions 2 insofar as I think it's a piece of crap and isn't worth playing any longer.
Well, I finished Curious Expeditions 2 insofar as I think it's a piece of crap and isn't worth playing any longer.
There is an Abandon thread too.
https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/...
I finished V Rising. After several tries, Dracula has been defeated.
I had intended on gathering up some of my old online buddies I've played with intermittently with since Team Fortress Classic, but it didn't pan out. Nonetheless, I kept playing solo, killing a boss or two every few days until the end.
A couple things I appreciate about it:
One, the progression is just steady enough to keep the feeling of forward momentum throughout. Only toward the end did it start to feel a bit grindy, but it never became intolerable.
Two, there were some user-friendly touches that show the developer values players' time. A big example is that buff potions persist for 60 minutes no matter how many times you die. And you may lose your items on death, but you keep your weapons and armor so you don't get into that annoying loop of having to craft secondary gear just so you can get back your primary stuff.
I was enjoying V Rising when I hit a wall. I just could not kill one of the bosses that was crucial to progressing the story. It was a while ago and I cannot remember which boss but I got nowhere near killing him but felt that there should have been options for me. Enjoyed the game though.
Nine Sols my no.3 game of 2024 has finally been completed, which for about the last 8 hours of it was me fighting the last boss Eigong again & again & again. I did it though, one of the toughest boss fights in my gaming life has been conquered.
The ending was very powerful. It takes a lot for a game to hit me emotionally as much as this climax did but its all built from the relationships you have with Shuanhuan, Shennong & a few others as you return to the Pavilion many times over the course of the game. It feels like genuine friendships are being forged, lessons about life being shared & stories from the past or hard truths coming out over a glass of wine.
I love also how the dialogue just feels honest yet informative about the characters lives & the main plotline around that. The characters have very distinct personalities too. Your character Ji takes no fools & is very to the point, the other 8 sols (the other members of the council that you go after) all have really good backstories & their own motivations for the decisions they have made.
The variety in maps range from a furnace factory where the open areas get huge heat blasts periodically that are life threatening. There are underground mines that are housed in darkness, with fall away platforms, sharp rocks that are damaging should you fall on them (or one falls on you) & a deviously challenging optional boss. There is even a galactic space dock. Every area has new challenges, forces you to use your skills in new ways & one section in particular completely changes up the pace in a fantastic way.
The normal enemies are tough until you just learn read their attacks, the further into the game you get the enemies are serving up more challenging attack combos. There are samurai's, hulking robots with flails, robotic wardogs that chase you down, kamikaze drones that hurtle towards your position & even dragon snipers who are usually perched up out of the way, their red laser (from their bows) moving up & down trying to catch you in their sights.
There is even that Batman quality about the game where certain enemies require specific actions to kill them. There are mutants that can only be properly killed by attaching your talisman to take that last chunk of life off them, you have enemies who's shields can only be broken with a charged attack. Little worm creatures that burrow underground that jump out of the dirt moments before reaching your feet. The enemy range is probably the best I've seen since Hollow Knight.
The bosses are where the true test lies, there are 8 main ones (the other 8 Sols) with 15 secondary or optional bosses. They are all expertly crafted, most you will need to experience, process their attack combos & big crimson attacks then better adjust on your next try, the try after that & so on. I would say 3 of the main bosses would make it into my top 20 hardest bosses ever in a game. You really do need to put multiple hours into these until you have done it so much you know what attacks are coming your way. They seem impossible until they are very possible, that barrier of difficulty is gradually broken down with every attempt at beating them.
You have a little hacking butterfly that can go in vents or explore the immediate area. It can open up doors, send down ropes that you can't initially reach, move platforms & engage/disarm lasers.
This game has it all, it really was extremely close to being my GOTY. A tough ride but a wholly worthwhile one, Nine Sols is one of the best 2D action Metroidvania's of all time.
I was enjoying V Rising when I hit a wall. I just could not kill one of the bosses that was crucial to progressing the story. It was a while ago and I cannot remember which boss but I got nowhere near killing him but felt that there should have been options for me. Enjoyed the game though.
Yeah, I could see that happening pretty easily. Some of these bosses were close to Dark Souls levels of just banging against a wall repeatedly until it breaks or you give up.
I haven't dug into different character builds, but I strongly suspect I randomly hit upon a good PvE build, which allowed me to cruise through. The reaper has a ranged attack that persists, spinning in place for a few seconds, It's completely brutal on any boss that stands still, even briefly. And I just so happened to get a rare drop for a very strong reaper early in the endgame that probably made things easy for me.
Having multiplayer help immensely. Because you could setup a base nearby and if one person dies you can focus on just surviving while the other person quickly ran back in. Cheesy but for some of the bosses really helpful. Also running the game with the option to teleport with goods helps immensely near the end.
Beat the game before it was 1.0 so I'm still interested in retrying it at some point. Sadly I'd have to do a new save which means right from the beginning.
I somehow finally managed -with motivation and competition with my son- to finish Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of ruin.
It was my first MH game. it was "ok" Nothing memorable.
I liked it OK and will probably keep an eye out from now on the franchise
I am not interested in the "post stuff game"
Finished the story with was just OK but overall a nice experience.
It's 25 years later, and Homeworld is completed. I finally got the Hiigarans home. I'll write something up later. I'm free of this albatross.
It's 25 years later, and Homeworld is completed. I finally got the Hiigarans home. I'll write something up later. I'm free of this albatross.
It is still on my list as well. I started playing 2 and was fascinated by it, but I know 1 is supposed to be rather difficult.
I remember giving up at the giant sphere of ships and never going back. God that was a long time ago.
I remember giving up at the giant sphere of ships and never going back. God that was a long time ago.
The remaster makes all that a lot easier
I finished the original back in the day. The remaster, when released, was so broken that I couldn't get past the 2nd section. I wonder if they ever fixed it. Probably not, because I read somewhere that the issues with the Homeworld 1 remaster were largely caused by it using the Homeworld 2 engine, which didn't fully support everything in Homeworld 1.
The creation of the iPhone and the 15 generations that followed.
The rise and retirement of Tom Brady and the Patriots (as a Jets fan, this still hurts)
Three Popes
9/11 and the construction of the Freedom Tower
Facebook
Twitter and then X
Three new D&D editions
600 extinct major species
The end of Blockbuster and the Rise of Netflix
The dominance of Amazon
The completion of the Baldur's Gate trilogy
K-pop
World of Warcraft
Instagram
Six presidents (well technically five but I'm not going down that rabbit hole...)
Brexit
Bitcoin
150 Nobel Prizes
Four Mars rovers
3.5 billion new earthlings
Over 1000 new saints
Three pandemics (SARS, Swine Flu, COVID)
10 sumo Yokozunas (we will miss you, Terunofuji)
Caitlin Jenner
The entire Marvel Cinematic Universe excluding the X-Men
All of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies
...and most importantly my PhD, black belt, marriage, and the birth of my kids who are now attending college.
All of these things have one thing in common: they all happened from the time I first installed Homeworld back in September 1999 to today when I finally beat this game over 25 years later.
To be clear, it's not like I was slamming my head against this game every month during all that time. It's just that the game back then for me was tough. I would play, make some progress, hit the wall and uninstall and move on to other stuff. Even with walkthroughs and strategy guides I did ok, but there was one mission - the Bridge of Sighs - that would stop me in my tracks every time.
For those few who don't know, Homeworld involves the Kushans discovering their home planet Kharak is, in fact, not their home planet. They discover this in the ruins of a massive starship that houses an ancient relic - a map of the galaxy pointed to a single location written in their most ancient language labeled with one word: Hiigara. Home.
Now Kharak, as a planet...sucks. It's basically Sudan and Death Valley, and it's getting worse. Fortunately, the Kushans are able to use the ruins and the relic to create a massive banana-shaped mothership that can carry frozen colonists like an oversized space minivan that can also create multiple ships of various sizes. And you're going to need these ships, because apparently the part of the relic that said "if you leave, the Taiidan empire will blow up your planet and make you start the toughest RTS game you've ever played" must have broken off.
And what a journey it was. It's not surprising that this game took so much inspiration from the 1970's Battlestar Galactica TV series, and then served as a major inspiration for the 2000's Battlestar Galactica TV series. From start to finish, Homeworld had an amazing story to tell. At the time, it was perhaps the most epic journey ever in a video game, and was considered one of the greatest games of all time.
Homeworld at the time was considered groundbreaking as a RTS game. Space combat in a fully 3D environment. Stunning visuals and art design. Emotional storytelling that linked the missions together. A mystical soundtrack that sounded at times ethereal, Mediterranean/Persian, haunting, and emotional that added a gravitas to the game. A sense of place that paradoxically existed alongside the sheer vast emptiness of space. Persistent units and fleet management that carried into your next mission.
And I sucked at it.
To be fair, the game didn't help. Homeworld, even the remastered version from 10 years ago, is known for being a very unforgiving game. Most of the missions were loaded with swarms of enemy ships that would come at you from different directions. What's worse, you didn't get a fresh start with the next mission. Rather, you carried any ships that survived your mission into the next one, and if you took a beating previously and were entering a meatgrinder of a zone, well...too bad. Basically you had to load up an earlier game when you were doing ok. As a result, that set of 16 missions turned out to be a series of jumping back and forth until you could get the most optimized fleet you could to survive the next Taiidan assault. For the most part, I was willing to suffer this to make progress. But each time I played and replayed this game in the 10-15 installs over the years, I would hit the same mission that would stop me in my tracks.
The Bridge of Sighs.
When you begin most missions in Homeworld, you see your disheveled fleet jump onto the tactical map. Most likely, you had a couple of dozen fighters and corvettes, a handful of midsized frigates, and a couple of destroyers that you were proud had survived so long. You'd look at the tactical map, and see where the red dots that represented enemies were in the distance. Usually a dozen or so enemy contacts were present to made your life miserable. But not the Bridge of Sighs, oh no. For this mission you finally travel to outskirts of Hiigara, and when you jump in, There's over 150 ships of various sizes all collected in a giant red sphere that serves as a trap and deterrent for your fleet. And, naturally, you had to get to the other side of that sphere. It was at this precise moment the dread would kick in when I remembered how much I sucked at this game. I would then proceed to fail this mission over and over again until making the command decision that the Hiigarans would now live as Space Nomads and wander the galaxy while I uninstalled the game. I even refused to admit defeat and watch a playthrough on YouTube. I'd rather figure it out or simply never know, and it was looking like I was going to be doomed to an unfulfilled journey. But this time...something changed.
I cheated.
Ok hear me out. I always loved this game. For the most part, the gameplay still holds up, the remastered version brought the graphics into the modern world, and the music, sound design, art style, and story remain timeless. But the game and the remastered version simply refused to have a difficulty slider, and that served as a major roadblock to me (and quite frankly for a lot folks as well, as you can see in the above comments). So when I reinstalled Homeworld Remastered this time, I decided to see if there are any mods that allowed you to lower the difficulty a bit. I found one, installed it, lowered the difficulty, and...it was still tough. Then I remembered the reason why:
Difficult game + mod difficulty slider + old man playing a tough RTS = relatively playable game.
In other words, yes the game was easier to play, but my already below-average RTS skills had atrophied even further, and this combination balanced out enough to make the game tough but playable. With that new balance, I was finally able to get through the sphere (using salvage corvettes to reinforce my fleet), survive this and the remaining missions, reclaim the homeworld, and see the ending.
At first, I was elated. This albatross was finally off my neck. But for some reason, part of this experience felt unfulfilled. Not because I used a mod - I don't care about that - but it was more about how the remastered game should have accommodated some of the lessons learned from the RTS community over the years. In 1999, this game was truly groundbreaking and innovative. Combined with the art, story, sound design, and gameplay elements, it consistently made most journalist's "Greatest Game's of All Time" lists. As the years passed and more innovative and streamlined gameplay designs arose, Homeworld felt more and more clunky and cumbersome to play. For this playthrough, I felt I was fighting the key commands and interface as much as the Taiidan empire. Homeworld: Remastered should have done better.
But then I remembered that, much like the mothership, I was trying to wrestle with ancient technology that at the time was state of the art. Once I came to terms with the fact that Homeworld (and even the Remastered version) was now a relic, and it should simply be enjoyed on its own terms, I settled into the experience and was able to truly enjoy the closure.
Homeworld is still an amazing experience, and for a lot of us it is a right of passage in the PC gaming community, like becoming the Avatar in Ultima IV (I'm old), saving Earth in XCOM, launching your rocket in Civilization, completing Half-Life 1 and 2, maxing out a character in WoW, finishing Skyrim, or even just landing a plane in Microsoft Flight Simulator or making a functioning metropolis in City Skylines. I've done all of these, but Homeworld kept eluding me. Well no more. The story is finally done (for now, Cataclysm and HW2 will happen at some point), and I and my Hiigarans can finally weave exaggerated tales to our descendants of how we travelled across the galaxy to find our home.
Now if I could just defeat Kane in Command & Conquer...
Up next, we're going to stick with the sci-fi genre and finally fire up Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, some light replays in Baldur's Gate 3 (I'm waiting for the final patch to drop), and WoW and Warhammer 40K: Mechanicus are some fun diversions.
PS EDIT: Actually, it's eleven Yokozunas. Congrats Hoshoryu on your promotion!
Homeworld
I was lucky enough to play and finish Homeworld and its expansion and sequel when it came out.
The thing I remember the most is the soundtrack, because it was the core of the atmosphere. I recall the different formations and fascination with the 3D aspect of the battles. I can't say that I remember details of any mission, nor the huge "red ball" one in particular. However, I do recall I heavily used the salvage corvettes to steal enemy ships. I believe it was possible to capture even a cruiser if you manage to get 5 or so of your salvage ships to gang up on it. If I lose a salvager or two, it was still worth it because they were probably order of magnitude cheaper than any capital ship.
In latter missions, captured enemy ships were probably making up half or more of my fleet.
Such a shame they completely blew it with the third one...
Yeah it only took me a couple of decades to figure out how to do it with the salvage corvettes.
Regarding the music, it's the best part of a game filled with best parts. The only negative is the official soundtrack doesn't include the Adagio for Strings track, which is basically like not including the Halo theme on the Halo album. Criminal.
Speaking of Homeworld and BattleStar Galactica they made a mod for Homeworld and then remastered it too. Whole campaign and story. And they are even recreating the seasons of the show as well.
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