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General / Re: VGCollect 2025 Secret Santa!
« on: December 10, 2025, 10:55:03 am »
Yes Dhaabi/Kashell are correct, I'll just send you the zoom info and you can join if you'd like! 
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General / Re: VGCollect 2025 Secret Santa!
« on: December 09, 2025, 08:41:58 am »I'm still down, regardless if my package is here or not.
Check your inbox! Just sent!
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General / Re: VGCollect 2025 Secret Santa!
« on: December 08, 2025, 10:58:29 am »
Kashell and I will still be hanging out over Zoom to open our gifts and we'll record it and post to YouTube for anyone that's interested! If there are any last-minute attendees who would like to hang out just DM me and I'll send you the Zoom info
Reminder opening will be this Wednesday at 8 Eastern!
Reminder opening will be this Wednesday at 8 Eastern!
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General / Re: VGCollect 2025 Secret Santa!
« on: December 07, 2025, 07:48:19 am »
Mine is safely packed away waiting for just a few more days! Cartagia did you end up getting yours yet?
Cartagia did you end up getting yours yet?
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General / Re: VGCollect 2025 Secret Santa!
« on: December 01, 2025, 09:32:47 am »
I'll send a Zoom link over DM to anyone interested! Who else is able to join?
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General / Re: VGCollect 2025 Secret Santa!
« on: December 01, 2025, 08:05:52 am »
How about 8 EST for an opening? 7 CST?
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Video Game Database Discussion / Re: Developer/Publisher Requests
« on: November 25, 2025, 10:09:19 am »
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General / Re: VGCollect 2025 Secret Santa!
« on: November 25, 2025, 10:03:03 am »
Even if it's just the three of us that would still be fun!
How about the 10th, 11th or 12th of December? I can't do the week of the 14th because of choir concert production week.
How about the 10th, 11th or 12th of December? I can't do the week of the 14th because of choir concert production week.
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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!
« on: November 23, 2025, 08:04:51 am »
Game 27: Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (DS) - 40 Hours
It's been a really long time since I played a Dragon Quest game. For all the Final Fantasy and Tales games, Dragon Quest is still series that I haven't really spent a lot of time with. I suppose it's fitting that I play 9 since the last game that I finished was 8. So how did my second foray with the series go?
I'm just going to start things right off by saying I didn't really care for this game very much. The biggest let down for me was the story. It probably takes a good 20 hours to get going. The story is propped up by paltry unrelated episodic stories that you must complete with no significance to an overall narrative other than a flimsy “doing good in the world will help you, main character!” It felt so painfully bland and uninspiring. The main villain isn't even introduced until 30 hours in, and he's given almost no back story and up until this point nothing that you have done has ever related to him at all. Character-wise this game feels very old school to me. Unlike Dragon Quest 8 which had a cast of lovable memorable characters in this game you get to create 4 characters of your own and as a result they have no character whatsoever and they don't develop at all during the course of the game.
Outside of the story the gameplay is vastly superior and that is just OK. It's a typical standard Dragon Quest fair that's very classic yet works well. To me the biggest change for this game was the use of different classes that you could swap between. To be honest, I never use this feature. I just never really saw the benefit to switch classes. I picked up four players that were set to my needs and was able to clear the game pretty easily. You also get skill points that you can dedicate to learn different abilities across all of your classes but you don't really earn them at a fast enough rate to really be able to explore the various options that are offered for you. It doesn't feel very balanced in my opinion.
The another annoyance is that switching to a different class drops your character down to level 1. That would be fine, if the leveling system in this game wasn’t so strange. Experience points are set by level, so it doesn't matter what monsters you fight you're always going to get about 50 exp points for a level 1 character and about 1000 exp for a level 30 character. So you will never be able to catch up levels to previous characters, especially if they die and lose out on experience altogether. My main character was 3 or 4 levels higher than all my other characters because it took me a while to figure out that you could even add more than one character to your game, and that was just the case for the rest of my playthrough.
Graphically the game is very impressive it might be the most impressive 3D DS game that I've played, second maybe to Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. This game maintains the high level of Polish that is known from other games that have been developed by level 5. Other aspects of the game just don't really feel that well done. For one thing there wasn’t enough music. You get 1 theme for every single town in the game and one theme for the entire overworld and it got really repetitive.
Ultimately this game isn’t bad, but it doesn't live up to the pedigree that is Dragon Quest. Maybe it’s fun to play with friends, but wasn’t able to experience that of course. A huge chunk of the game’s multiplayer elements are of course gone now too since the servers no longer exist. Given the amount of time investment it takes for you to finish it, I would recommend you stick to other entries in the series.
It's been a really long time since I played a Dragon Quest game. For all the Final Fantasy and Tales games, Dragon Quest is still series that I haven't really spent a lot of time with. I suppose it's fitting that I play 9 since the last game that I finished was 8. So how did my second foray with the series go?
I'm just going to start things right off by saying I didn't really care for this game very much. The biggest let down for me was the story. It probably takes a good 20 hours to get going. The story is propped up by paltry unrelated episodic stories that you must complete with no significance to an overall narrative other than a flimsy “doing good in the world will help you, main character!” It felt so painfully bland and uninspiring. The main villain isn't even introduced until 30 hours in, and he's given almost no back story and up until this point nothing that you have done has ever related to him at all. Character-wise this game feels very old school to me. Unlike Dragon Quest 8 which had a cast of lovable memorable characters in this game you get to create 4 characters of your own and as a result they have no character whatsoever and they don't develop at all during the course of the game.
Outside of the story the gameplay is vastly superior and that is just OK. It's a typical standard Dragon Quest fair that's very classic yet works well. To me the biggest change for this game was the use of different classes that you could swap between. To be honest, I never use this feature. I just never really saw the benefit to switch classes. I picked up four players that were set to my needs and was able to clear the game pretty easily. You also get skill points that you can dedicate to learn different abilities across all of your classes but you don't really earn them at a fast enough rate to really be able to explore the various options that are offered for you. It doesn't feel very balanced in my opinion.
The another annoyance is that switching to a different class drops your character down to level 1. That would be fine, if the leveling system in this game wasn’t so strange. Experience points are set by level, so it doesn't matter what monsters you fight you're always going to get about 50 exp points for a level 1 character and about 1000 exp for a level 30 character. So you will never be able to catch up levels to previous characters, especially if they die and lose out on experience altogether. My main character was 3 or 4 levels higher than all my other characters because it took me a while to figure out that you could even add more than one character to your game, and that was just the case for the rest of my playthrough.
Graphically the game is very impressive it might be the most impressive 3D DS game that I've played, second maybe to Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. This game maintains the high level of Polish that is known from other games that have been developed by level 5. Other aspects of the game just don't really feel that well done. For one thing there wasn’t enough music. You get 1 theme for every single town in the game and one theme for the entire overworld and it got really repetitive.
Ultimately this game isn’t bad, but it doesn't live up to the pedigree that is Dragon Quest. Maybe it’s fun to play with friends, but wasn’t able to experience that of course. A huge chunk of the game’s multiplayer elements are of course gone now too since the servers no longer exist. Given the amount of time investment it takes for you to finish it, I would recommend you stick to other entries in the series.
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General / Re: VGCollect 2025 Secret Santa!
« on: November 20, 2025, 02:30:19 pm »
Anyone want to do a virtual opening together? I was sad that we weren't able to have one last year!
I was sad that we weren't able to have one last year!
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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!
« on: November 06, 2025, 05:45:42 pm »
Game 26 - Ty the Tasmanian Tiger HD (PS5) - 8 Hours
Have you ever gone back to your childhood middle or elementary school? Walked through the hallways, looked at the lockers and thought to yourself… when was I ever this small? That’s basically how it felt playing Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. I greatly enjoyed playing this game on my PS2 when I was a kid and decided to pick up the HD remaster digitally for a much-needed change of pace from all the stressful horror-filled games that I’ve been playing over the past few months. And immediately, the game conjured up a lot of fond memories. I thought the game was way vaster and more complex than it actually is, and I also found the game was a lot easier.
Of course now as an adult, I can see that this game is pretty simple and yet it's still fun and offers a really solid gameplay experience. I found the controls to be very fluid, and I really enjoyed the level design that borrows from a lot of Australian topography. Of course the characters are great with lots of Australian slang and silly dialogue. Even though the game is a clone of Mario 64, which was very popular during this period of gaming, it's still fun to collect all the Thunder Eggs the Golden Cogs, all the boomerangs, and the hidden concept art. I had just as much fun playing this now as I did when I was a kid.
This era of gaming will always have a special place in my heart and I think it would be fun to play more games from this time period. Maybe that will be something fun to do next year. I want to start with Scooby-Doo: Night of 100 Frights, the first game I ever played on my PS2. That will be really interesting.
Have you ever gone back to your childhood middle or elementary school? Walked through the hallways, looked at the lockers and thought to yourself… when was I ever this small? That’s basically how it felt playing Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. I greatly enjoyed playing this game on my PS2 when I was a kid and decided to pick up the HD remaster digitally for a much-needed change of pace from all the stressful horror-filled games that I’ve been playing over the past few months. And immediately, the game conjured up a lot of fond memories. I thought the game was way vaster and more complex than it actually is, and I also found the game was a lot easier.
Of course now as an adult, I can see that this game is pretty simple and yet it's still fun and offers a really solid gameplay experience. I found the controls to be very fluid, and I really enjoyed the level design that borrows from a lot of Australian topography. Of course the characters are great with lots of Australian slang and silly dialogue. Even though the game is a clone of Mario 64, which was very popular during this period of gaming, it's still fun to collect all the Thunder Eggs the Golden Cogs, all the boomerangs, and the hidden concept art. I had just as much fun playing this now as I did when I was a kid.
This era of gaming will always have a special place in my heart and I think it would be fun to play more games from this time period. Maybe that will be something fun to do next year. I want to start with Scooby-Doo: Night of 100 Frights, the first game I ever played on my PS2. That will be really interesting.
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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!
« on: November 03, 2025, 03:56:04 pm »For me, I knew it was going to be a big disadvantage for f. That's not to say that I don't think it's a good game. I do, but that was my biggest reservation regarding the new direction that this game took from previous entries. I think a similar story/idea could definitely be done in an American setting but obviously the game would have to have been completely different and I don't think that's the story the developers wanted to tell.
Do you think that they had an original idea for a horror game and just made it Silent Hill for IP recognition?
Yes I do think that. I don't think it would have sold as well if it wasn't branded Silent Hill.
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General / Re: VGCollect 2025 Secret Santa!
« on: November 03, 2025, 08:13:15 am »
I'm all done shopping! I hope my recipient will like their gifts, also I hope they will catch the silly theme I came up with for their items. 
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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!
« on: November 03, 2025, 08:12:28 am »
For me, I knew it was going to be a big disadvantage for f. That's not to say that I don't think it's a good game. I do, but that was my biggest reservation regarding the new direction that this game took from previous entries. I think a similar story/idea could definitely be done in an American setting but obviously the game would have to have been completely different and I don't think that's the story the developers wanted to tell.