Messages

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: July 13, 2026, 12:50:03 pm »

Game 12 - Crow Country (PS5) - 5 Hours

Absolutely fantastic horror game, top to bottom. This game perfectly evokes an early 3D game style with beautiful and thoughtfully crafted environments, great atmosphere and music, amazing sound effects, and all of it works together in a masterful way to create a very creepy and unsettling yet entertaining horror game experience.

While it isn't the longest game, you can tell that every single inch is just stuffed to the brim with detail. The game has near perfect environmental design, great enemies, solid controls, an interesting story with just the right amount of spice, and puzzles that were just difficult enough but not frustratingly so. I don't think I can name a single flaw with this game, other than maybe the shooting controls being a little wonky, but to me it fits very well within the style the game is trying to evoke, and the era of gaming that it pays homage to.

Crow Country is easily my favorite game that I've played so far this year, and you like old school Resident Evil or PlayStation one games in general, definitely check it out.

I loved reading this write-up! I have a file somewhere for this. I'll likely start the game from the beginning since I can't remember where I left off. Knowing that it's short makes me feel better about that.

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General / Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:

« on: July 07, 2026, 10:28:50 am »

Sony's announcement to go pure digital by 2028 is disheartening, but I think it means I can finally, FINALLY get caught up on my backlog and replay those games I've wanted to replay for years.

https://www.gematsu.com/2026/07/sony-interactive-entertainment-to-end-physical-game-disc-production-in-january-2028

It's looking more and more like the rest of my life is going to be getting caught up with my backlog. I'm fine with that, but a part of me is saddened that I won't be able to get excited for new releases anymore, even if the game looks amazing. If I can't own the game, I'm not buying it.

I was thinking about this some more. I looked at the games that I want to replay and the games I have that I still haven't played. By my estimate, I got a few thousand hours worth of game time ahead. I guess that's another perk of playing longer games.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: July 06, 2026, 09:03:54 am »

52. Mega Man X

Of course, my 52nd game for the year had to be a classic. And, what a classic. It's not my favorite game in the series, but it's still top tier in every regard. I played it on my SNES Classic so I got as close to an authentic experience as possible. I fought the Mavericks in my usual order, but I did try to change things up and not use their weaknesses against them. This made the fights against Sting Chameleon (and his long-winded introduction) and Spark Mandrill a lot more difficult. But, it was worth it. Of course, I got the Hadoken and used it when I could. All in all, this game is a masterpiece that shows you can make an amazing game on amazing hardware without thousands of people working on it. *cough Rock Star cough*

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: July 02, 2026, 07:58:03 am »

51. Super Mario World

My partner and I went through this on my Mini-SNES. We didn't do everything, but we still got a bunch of stages cleared. This includes that secret exit at Cheese Bridge. I was proud of myself for getting that one. There's not much to say that hasn't been said: this game is still awesome in every aspect. It's colorful. It's varied. It's classic fun from every corner. I still wish it followed the Mario 3 feature where Mario/Luigi don't become immediately small after being hit but eh. That's a minor nitpick. The game is crazy-generous with power ups, secrets and one ups.

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Modern Video Games / Re: It's officially over.

« on: July 01, 2026, 10:55:20 am »

I just posted about this in the general topic, haha.

I'm surprisingly not as upset as I thought I'd be. Going pure digital isn't my MO. I won't buy a PS6. (I haven't even thought about M$ for years.)

I have a lot of games that I have yet to play, and a lot of games that I want to replay. And, there are times I learn of new series' out there that look interesting that have physical releases. I'll still be gaming no matter how much the industry changes.

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General / Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:

« on: July 01, 2026, 10:33:12 am »

Sony's announcement to go pure digital by 2028 is disheartening, but I think it means I can finally, FINALLY get caught up on my backlog and replay those games I've wanted to replay for years.

https://www.gematsu.com/2026/07/sony-interactive-entertainment-to-end-physical-game-disc-production-in-january-2028

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: June 30, 2026, 08:19:40 am »

50. The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak

On the one hand, this was samey in ways to others I've played. Van and his assistants go through what are essentially the same motions as Bracers/SSS/Class VII. I still prefer the SSS overall to the employees of Arkride Solutions. On the other hand, the story and setting felt like a fresh start. The events that were referenced from previous games were ephemeral moments, meaning I didn't feel lost. Of course, there was generous usage of the skip/FF features during the green 4SPGs. I really grew to like Van, Agnes, and Risette. Quatre, however, was my favorite. I hope he gets more airtime in the second game. I also liked his combat abilities. The rest of the cast was fine. The last character to join felt tacked on. Finally, combat was enjoyable. NGL, seeing a bunch of shard skills activate all at once was a rush. I popped in the second game just to see what carried over. Seeing my team go from level 70-something back down to level 10 is kind of a bummer. All that to say I might hold off on part two for a while. But, we'll see. I like changing my mind when it means I get to play more fun games.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: June 28, 2026, 01:06:05 pm »

49. The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales - True Ending

Okay, my earlier hypotheses were wrong, and I'm glad about that. The story had some surprising twists that made the quest for the true ending worth it. Overall, I think I'll score this game somewhere above average. It started strong. The gameplay loop is addictive. But, there was a lot of repetition. I feel like there could have been more variety with each era and location. I get what they were going for but little tweaks to each era would have gone a long way. The final boss was horrible. I hate it when games do a genre-swap and expect it to go seamlessly. I'm playing a 2D action-adventure; not Drakengard. I dunno; I'm all over the place with this one.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: June 26, 2026, 04:50:33 pm »

48. The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales - The Peace in Which We Walk

I was a thorough adventurer, so a lot of the stuff that was needed to reach this next ending was already done. I think I see where this is going. I hope I'm wrong, but we shall see. Obviously, I won't get into any spoiler territory.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: June 26, 2026, 11:51:03 am »

47. The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales - As Long as Any Hope Remains

Uh. Ending one of whatever, I guess? The game just ended after beating a boss. On the one hand, I knew I was near the end based on all my inventory and the life bar. On the other hand, WTF? There isn't that much left for me to discover. I'm confused. Oh well. Clear data has been saved and I'm seeing what's next.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: June 21, 2026, 02:18:23 pm »

46. Resident Evil Requiem

This Capcom at its finest. Pure excellence in nearly every aspect. It's bloody. It's spooky. It's intriguing. And it's so polished that it has me scratching my head as to how the developers were able to make something look so good. It's on the shorter side, to be sure. I would have happily gone through one more area as both Grace and Leon if it meant more discoveries, enemies to slaughter, and places to learn more about the overall world of Resident Evil. My only note on the game is that it's easy to get turned around or lost, but that's it. Otherwise, I recommend this game to anyone. I'm pumped to get a review going for it.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: June 06, 2026, 01:28:11 pm »

45. Resident Evil 2 Remake - Leon

As soon as Code Veronica's remake is announced, I finish yet another run in an modern RE. I think I like Claire more as a character, but I like Leon's route more. Getting to play as Ada for a bit was a nice change of pace. Otherwise, it's basically the same thing. Leon doesn't get access to the Heart Key in the station. Instead, he gets the Club Key. Leon doesn't get the grenade launcher, but he gets a flamethrower. Fighting William in container yard area is still annoying as hell; something that seems to be a common factor in all horror games. I'll probably play Requiem next, which looks to be amazing.

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General / Re: The Mighty Polymega

« on: June 06, 2026, 01:26:38 pm »

Pass.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: May 31, 2026, 01:27:42 pm »

44. The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie

I'm exhausted after this one. I take full accountability for not doing my research prior to this outside a quick internet search of "Next game to play in the Crossbell arc." I really wanted to see what happened next with Lloyd, his friends, the city he calls home, and some of the supporting characters. I didn't want to see what happened to Rean; someone I found dull as dirt since my brief stint in the Erebonia arc. Unfortunately for me, to see what happens with Lloyd, one has to see what happens with Rean. I thought I could get by with reading the story synopses that the game provided for Cold Steel - Cold Steel IV but I was pretty lost. However, that kind of worked to my advantage since it got to a point where I could simply scene skip everything and not feel like I'm missing anything. At some point I had a thought - people had to go through five games total to see the truth behind Rean. If my experience with the series is anything to go by, then that could mean an upwards of 1000 hours of game time. Sheesh. Anyways, the third character was cool, and honestly a fresh diversion from the other two mains. Combat was cool, and I really enjoyed seeing the SSS go from crisp, 2D sprites to full 3D models. I have more thoughts that require a review so I'll just stop here.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: May 27, 2026, 09:36:15 am »

Game 7 - Metaphor: ReFantazio (PS5) - 84 Hours

Ohh boy. This game was a hard one for me to finish. I don't think I've ever been down on a game this much in a very long time, especially one that's been so well received by others. The TLDR is that I found this game to be a painfully anemic spiritual successor to Persona, with a lot of problems that added up to an underwhelming experience.

The best part about the Persona series is that juxtaposition between the high-school simulator and the dungeon crawling fantasy. In Metaphor, however, the setting is about as generic fantasy as you can get, which takes out a lot of the intrigue for me. I thought it was going to be a reverse fantasy, where the main reality takes place in this middle age setting, and the “fantasy” is a world akin to our real-life modern reality. This is present, yes, but only as far as the story and isn’t actually realized in gameplay, which was incredibly disappointing. The best part about the setting was the relationships between the multiple races, but the rest of this game’s world is not all that exciting if you’ve played a JRPG before. Compare it to Persona, and it feels like so much is missing.

This sentiment of “something’s missing” came through the strongest during the road trip segments which are prominently featured as part of your day-to-day story. You'll be traveling along the ground through the water and in the air and you'll be watching these cutscenes where the characters are standing as still as statues with their hair not even blowing in the wind, and then you'll stop along the way to feature this panorama of this broad landscape or a town but there's no 3D exploration at all and it's just provided in the form of text that you read, and then the final dungeon that you get to ends up being a carbon copy of the previous dungeon and there's really only three layouts for the entire game (tower, jungle, tomb). Outside of the 5 major cities, any other towns you visit is just a single screen with maybe a shop or dialogue option. It could feel the ache as your party takes in these beautiful vistas that serve as brief respites during your journey – I wanted to actually explore those through gameplay! I thought the game was going to have more open world exploration, as was teased with the large desert area outside of Grand Trad. This seems to have been dropped entirely in favor of tedious and overly long dungeons that just don’t feel exciting to explore.

I found the combat while pretty decent to be at the end of my experience very long and tedious. I don't like the mixture of real time and turn based combat. The combat is either extremely difficult or extremely easy and it is all based on whether you can get the jump on the enemy in the real time combat version. And a lot of enemies have fast, unpredictable and uninterruptable attacks, and if they hit you first, you might as well just run away and try the fight again. I did end up liking the archetype system, and the different ways that you can customize characters ended up being really fun to explore. It was definitely my favorite part of the game and the bosses offered up some really satisfying challenge. But outside of combat, there’s maybe about half of the activities that you could do in P5: no ability to romance any characters, no jobs, no clubs, nothing.

The last thing that just didn't do it for me was the visual design and the music. I will say that the character design is incredible and the human designs are top notch. The monster designed though is about as generic as you can get, and overall I just really didn't like the visuals the constant shifting of magla crystals in the environment felt very distracting to me the user interface just wasn't very strong and the music just isn't very good it's either generic or really stupid with the heavy reliance on these fast vocalizations that clash incredibly with the amount of spoken dialogue that happens during this game, especially during the battles.

And of course, the nail in the coffin for me is the 80+ hour story. Like other Atlus game, I question why it needs to be that long to finish the story – it’s fine, but I really didn’t feel like it made a good use of it. There’s a lot happening in the story, sure but to me it really boils down to unrelated smaller story plots that are done to gain favor in your bid for king. There’s a LOT of political posturing and flowery dialogue about how to run a country and yada yada yada but it just didn’t really resonate with me because the overall story movement (except for the anti-religious movements in Martira) didn’t really feel all that exciting. The main antagonist, Louis, still manages to fall into the typical villain video game pitfalls with most of his backstory really coming out towards the end of the game.

Metaphor is a fine game, but really didn’t capture me like it did for other people. For a game that’s been scored only one point lower than Persona 5 and was a contender for GOTY, I felt like the move away from the Persona series led to a lot of sacrifices, and it didn’t feel like Metaphor had enough time in the oven to really flesh out the new ideas.

I'm 55 hours into Metaphor and have the same general sentiment as you. I really don't see what made this a GOTY contender, as the story and characters are all very surface level. Visually, Atlas (after all these years) still hasn't figured out how to animate in a way that doesn't make everyone look stiff as heck. Side by side with a Square Enix game, or even something like Expedition 33 and it looks like amateur hour. I really don't get how they have gone so many years without improving in this area, it's been a problem for decades.

One thing I differ from you on though is the character designs. I just don't think they look that interesting. The human designs are cool, but of the characters you meet in the game there isn't a single one who I would ever buy a figure or poster for to show off. Maybe I'll meet one later on in the game I like but as of right now all the character designs fit firmly in the "fine" category. I don't hate them, but I also don't particularly like the either.

My favorite part by far, which you touched on, is the archetype system. Having the ability to mix and match abilities between classes to kind of build your own custom class makes for a crazy amount of skill expression in building your team. You can make some really broken classes. My favorite right now is my mage who actually gains mana each turn passively, allowing for easy dungeon clears as he can spam his skills and still enter the final boss with nearly full mana. I love RPGs with deep customization like this because it is fun to theory craft party builds that let you steamroll dungeons.

I enjoyed Metaphor, and I agree with all the above. I think combat and overall atmosphere helped with the story's shortcomings (which I enjoyed because the characters drove it). That said, I remember being more than ready for it to be over. I've played games longer than it but they either had better pacing, better writing, or a better combination of the two.