WHAT PLAY YOU!? Version 3.0

[Jazzy G]

Hopefully it's better optimised on Switch 2 and I can tear myself away from driving a train, tidying my flat, and getting uni work done. 

[FLips]

I've been playing a bunch of stuff lately, mostly on Nintendo Switch 2 (and I imagine most of them would be available on Switch 1). A lot of it is currently in the Switch sale or just expired. I'll edit/do another post after this one cos I want to talk about one game in particular.

I grabbed Star Ocean First Departure R and Star Ocean Second Story R for about £5 and £23 respectively. They're back to their full prices of £16.99 and £44.99 now though which is a shame because while I haven't played the First one yet (they're like Final Fantasy and you don't need to play them in sequence), the Second Story is one of the best RPGs I've played in my life and I ended up sinking about 45 hours into it in less than a week and got pretty much 100% of one of the two character stories done. I can New Game+ as the other main character as it's a Claire/Leon situation where the games differ depending on who you pick.

Both of them are upgraded upgrades of retro games, First Departure being SNES and Second Story being PS1. They both got PSP remakes and now these versions, with the former being a traditional turn based RPG from what I read.

Second Story though, wow, what a game. Looks absolutely stunning. They've went for that overdone HD2D thing Octopath Traveler did but instead of doing the whole world like that, it's only the characters, with the environments being fully 3D. The combo is unique and beautiful.

The music isn't up there with Final Fantasy or anything and honestly I've forgotten it already but it's nice as you're playing it and I can't fault it as none of it was particularly bad. JRPGs have such a high bar though. You do get original and remastered orchestra soundtracks though which is a nice touch, and there's full voice acting which is well done too.

The gameplay has so much depth to it though. It's not turn based, it's hack and slash battles where you can give your team different formations that effect stats, and swap between them on the fly to cast spells or use items. It's very very close to the Final Fantasy VII Remake battle system but without the active time bar thing dictating when you can act, other than items which you can't spam and spells which the casters can be interrupted while doing.
Enemies have a health and shield bar with certain special moves depleting the shield bar and activating a BREAK which stuns them and opens them up to big attacks. As I said, it's Final Fantasy VII remake almost to the letter.
As you progress through the game and your party grows, your inactive members can have their special moves set to an Attack Formation and you can call them in when their bar fills like Marvel Vs Capcom assists which is a nice touch. You can find secret gems that can summon previous protagonists from other Star Ocean games too, not that I knew any of them.
There's also a combo you build that resets if you get back attacked or die in battle, and getting the combo to 50, then 150, then 300 will give your party buffs based on your formation.

Exploration is on a classic world map, and I won't spoil too much but there are unique variations of a Chocobo and Airship in this game later on to help explore. Enemies are visible as colour spirits on the world map, so there's no random encounters. Green are easy enemies that later you can learn to kill on touch so you don't have to fight them, Purple which are equally levelled enemies, Red which are difficult enemies you're underlevelled for, and then 20 or so "Raid" enemies which are big red stationary ones that are all late/post game superbosses.

Between the battles there's a full job-style system where as you do quests (both in-game achievements and guild missions) and battles, you earn XP, BP and SP. XP is for your level, BP is for your Battle Actions, which are skills you can learn to improve things like offense, defense, speed, critical damage, etc and SP is for your jobs which include things like Art, Fishing, Pickpocketing, Alchemy and Blacksmithing. All these jobs are also tied to certain stats, to encourage early game builds, so for example Alchemy might boost your MP, Knife skills for the Cooking will upgrade your Attack stat. By the endgame though if you do everything like I did you can full max every level, skill and job so ultimately it doesn't matter but the order you do them in can effect your playthrough greatly.
These jobs also effect certain minigames and things you can do, so there's a full fishing encyclopedia and an NPC that rewards you for catching stuff and selling them to her. Cooking certain foods can give your party useful buffs, and Art can create items like XP Cards to double XP in a battle, or to use for crafting or upgrading weapons. It all feels very overwhelming at first but once you start using the skills to help yourself you realise what you're doing and it all falls into place.

There's a ton of side quests to do such as the previously mentioned Guild, in-game challenge list, a Golden Saucer-style theme park area called Fun City which has a battle arena, Bunny Racing, Masterchef cook-off and other bits. You can earn pretty good items in all of them. Then there's the optional superbosses, the fishing encyclopedia, hidden chests, an entire optional post-game dungeon, and unique viewpoints you can find scattered about the world, towns and dungeons. I'm likely forgetting a bunch more too.

The story is pretty fantastic too. Again, without spoilering anything other than the first intro of the game, you pick either Claude C. Kenny or Rena Lanford as your starting character (I chose Claude) and depending on who you pick alters not only the story and dialogue, starting points and play style (Claude is a fighter, Rena is a healer) but also changes which characters you can recruit for your team, with some being exclusive to each character and also some that regardless of character are only recruitable depending on who else you do/don't recruit.

The general story is Claude is nepo son of a Space Fleet commander and while exploring a planet he gets sucked into some sort of teleporter to some unknown planet where he ends up bumping into Rena in the forest. She sees him use his ray gun on an enemy and convinces her town he's the fabled "Hero of Light" that has came to stop all the evil and chaos that is spreading through their planet after a mysterious meteorite collided with it. They then set out to investigate the meteorite.

There's "99" endings, which is true but it's character endings, not 99 unique endings, so for example my run got me 4 of them for my party and these are based on who you recruit, how your friendship/romance level is with certain characters, who is in your endgame party and other factors. My 2nd completion that I did the final boss again for a challenge unlocked a further 3 of them as my relationships changed on postgame.

So for my Claude run, 7/99 endings with pretty much 100% completion, 45 hours is speedy and it was a breeze to playthough. I highly highly recommend this one and while in hindsight it is worth full price, I would wait til another sale because £23 is steal. I'm excited to do New Game+ as Rena and see what changes.

 

[Cousin Jim Bob]

Just bought a PS5 before they hoof the price up. I haven't had a PlayStation since PS2. I have firmly been on the Xbox side ever since. The future of Xbox looks a bit dicey though, so have rejoined the other side. 

I am extremely excited. I am going to buy a years worth of PS+ Extra on Friday and get cracking on two decades of exclusives I have missed out on.

Looking forward to this! It will run GTA 6 better than my Series S too.

[Devon Malcolm]

I'm still playing Dredge. It's brilliant, I absolutely love it. The couple of times I thought I was stuck was because I was missing something obvious, not because of the game. The contrast between day and night is superb, and it's one of those games where you can just abandon the main tasks in favour of just wandering around for hours doing very little.

[RedTwoster]

A superb write-up as ever @FLips, and it’s made me want to give Second Story R another go. First time around, I just couldn’t get on board with the battle system. I can’t remember why exactly, but I remember it feeling like a slog. You enthusing about it like that makes me think I was at fault rather than the game. 

[Scratch]

We’re on holiday at the moment and I loaded my Steam Deck up with games I’ve not had time to play. Six days in, and I still haven’t played any from my backlog as I’ve been well and truly hooked on Raccooin which I bought just before we left.

It’s a coin pusher roguelike that’s accessible but has very deep mechanics and nuance. I’ve always believed the best games are those that nail a particular mechanic and deliver it over and over, and this does that. I’ve always been a fan of the real life coin pushers and this scratches that itch in spades.

My game of the year so far.

[Shirtie]

Anyone played the Tomb Raider Trilogy remastered? 

 

Is it worth a download?

[The Gaffer]

41 minutes ago, Shirtie said:

Anyone played the Tomb Raider Trilogy remastered? 

 

Is it worth a download?

I think it's pretty much as perfect as you'd want it to be. I'm looking forward to checking out IV-V-VI at some point. 

I'd personally ensure classic controls are activated. The level design just wasn't made with 3D analogue stick movement in mind. Don't be shy about switching between old and new graphics too. I found some of the facelifts great, but the textures and simpler lighting of the old visuals is still far better in some of the levels. 

[Merzbow]

2 hours ago, Shirtie said:

Anyone played the Tomb Raider Trilogy remastered? 

 

Is it worth a download?

It was.

They updated it recently and for some reason broke it with a bunch of bugs, hopefully they manage to fix it.

[Jazzy G]

I've found the area on Pokopia that has railways, albeit in the form of the old mine carts etc, and am now trying to build a rail network for the pokemon that live there. Including little trains. 

Haven't found Psyduck yet, but I know how it's done so it is only a matter of time. 

[BomberPat]

I finished Spider-Man 2; the complaints from my first post about it still stand, that it feels a bit too samey to the first game so you don't get the initial joy from how cool it is to play as Spider-Man, but I enjoyed the story a lot, even if it dragged and got a bit silly towards the end. I like the version of the Spider-Man world they've created, and most of the characters in it, but I don't like versions of Spider-Man that have access to loads of fancy gadgets and tech - it feels like trying to brute force the character into a Batman/Iron Man vibe, and it leads to a bit of ludonarrative dissonance when Peter Parker is meant to be a struggling college graduate who can't hold down a job and Miles is a high school kid with a single mum, yet both of them have access to an endless array of high-tech gadgetry. Maybe unavoidable in a game that requires new abilities and weapons and whatnot, but not to my tastes in terms of the character. 

Also finished Once Upon A Katamari - not one of the stronger games in the series, but they're always fun. I still have some extra bits to do - crowns and presents to collect - but it's effectively done.

I played Venba - super short game about the life of a Tamil immigrant family in Canada, told through cooking traditional Tamil food. It's a very simple puzzler, basically - get the order of ingredients right to make the dish, move on to the next bit of the story. Under an hour long, but very nice to play, and with a banging soundtrack.

Last night I played a bit of Resident Evil Village. I've played very little Resi, and very rarely play anything first-person. I'm less than an hour in and mostly find the combat prohibitively difficult, and while I understand that's by design to make you more inclined to strategise and run away when that's the better option, I'm finding the first-person view really restricts my ability to do that well. I don't know if I'm going to stick with it - I played it because it's on PS+, and they're doing a thing where if you play it for half an hour you get a free movie credit on the Sony movies app - or switch difficulty down to Casual and carry on. 

[FLips]

Been hammering my Switch 2 lately, mostly due to it being new but also because I don't have seating in my games room in the new house yet so my retro has been untouched for a while.

Pokopia
I was hooked on this for all of about a week, just before I got hooked on Star Ocean 2 and blasted through that. For me though it doesn't have the longevity Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley did. Once I got all the areas unlocked it began to be overwhelming and finding new Pokemon and exploring new areas was now a game of finding places to build houses and wait in real-time for them, and endless smashing blocks to rebuild areas that were too vast for me to be bothered with. I got halfway through the final missions which are all "Collect X material" and gave up on it.
If you like the decorating aspect of Animal Crossing or the building of Minecraft but massively limited and without the survival aspect, there is a ton to enjoy here. For me who enjoys the slice of life and discovery aspects though, the endgame just wasn't for me. I'll go back to it no doubt, when my games have dried up and I remember to finish it, and I definitely got my money's worth by spending a gross amount of time on it every day for a week or two.

Shinobi: Art of Vengeance
I played the demo of this briefly on PS5 in my local retro place and didn't gel with it, but saw the demo was on Switch 2 and knew there was likely more to it so gave it a go and what do you know, I was completely wrong. 100%'d the demo this time around and found there was a lot more depth to it than the combat, so bought the game for about half price in the sale, maybe £12 or so.
Absolutely fantastic game. Fluid, fast combat which like the graphical style is an updated version of what SEGA did in Streets of Rage 4. It's combo-heavy, lots of enemy juggling but now with a lot more moves, dodges and counters at your disposal. 
Outside of the combat though there is some excellent platforming, a lot of it completely manageable but if you go for the 100% like I did you'll find there are some really tough, almost Celeste-level platforming challenges in this. A few of them had me up the walls but with some perserverence I got through them.

Can't say enough good about this one. Sharp and 1:1 responsive combat and platforming, brilliant music, gorgeous graphical style and a gripping and rewarding gameplay loop which allows you to revisit any level and any checkpoint as soon as you unlock them so you can mooch for secrets and explore at your own pace, but also easily go back to areas once you unlock new abilities. It felt like not only a natural evolution of Shinobi, but also of the Metroidvania style game as a whole by containing it into individual levels rather than one big world. 

I finished 100% but have a post-game superboss and boss rush mode to do which apparently knock it up to a confusing 136%. I tried the former a few times and genuinely can't do it. Maybe one day.

Powerslave:Exhumed

Remaster of an old Saturn/PS1/PC shooter set in Ancient Egypt. Looks and plays exactly as you would expect a DOOM clone from the mid-90s to play but this one does have a bit of backtracking for you to return to old levels with new powers to get secrets which I think added a lot to the playability of it. There's not a lot to say about it really. Looks and plays as you'd expect, if you like DOOM, Shadow Warrior, Blood, etc then this will be up your street. Good fun.

Killing Time Resurrected
Another remaster of an old PC and I think 3DO FPS, this one with an open world and live-action cutscenes and actors, and digitized sprites for enemies. Gives it a bit of a unique feel and the game is also pretty fun if you like this sort of thing. The open world gives it a bit of exploration you don't usually get in these games. If you want a 90s DOOM clone that is a lot quirkier than other games like it, this is worth a shout.

Ultracore
An updated and released Amiga run and gun that never saw the light of day because Psygnosis cancelled it when it was nearly finished back in the early/mid 1990s. No idea why other than maybe the Amiga and Sega CD weren't moneymakers in 1994 and they were moving into PS1 era, which actually yeah makes sense.
I'm stuck on the final stage but other than that it's great fun. Really fills a gap for a retro run and gun but the quality of life updates to the controls make it play and run smooth as butter. Twin stick controls (optional) make multi-directional shooting a joy, and with jump mapped to a shoulder button it makes the platforming and shooting a doddle too. Looks and sounds like an Amiga Psygnosis title but also plays better than most of them too. A real winner this one and only a few quid.

World of Horror
Rogue-like "1-bit" graphical horror game that looks and plays like a text adventure board game similar to Escape from Dark Castle/Sector. You randomise the Old God that's haunting the town, the protagonist and their stats and the mysteries you have to solve within and then just play through it the same way you would any text adventure. You check an abandoned house, uh-oh there's a ghost there, enter combat. You rest in the bath, regain 5hp. 
The idea is cool, and it looks great for something meant to look so basic, but the rogue-like elements spoil it. Despite randomising certain things, having to replay the same mysteries over and over to unlock new things to get better endings got old pretty fast. Borrowed this off a mate so nothing lost, but glad I didn't pay £14 for it in the sale before he just borrowed me it.

Star Ocean First Departure R
After raving and gushing about Second Story R, I went back to play the first entry into the series. It's still early days, I'm maybe 4 hours in or so, but it's been tough to knuckle down and devote time to it. Gone are all of the graphical bells and whistles and fluid combat of Second Story, and also gone is the visible enemy encounters as it's back to basics random encounters. Combat is still hack and slash but with archaic menuing and less fluidity. I can see why this one was a fiver on sale when the second entry was £23. 
That being said, I'm still gonna try with this one. It's not bad by any stretch but it's like going from Pokemon Fire Red to Pokemon Red. The core elements are still there but it's hard to go back to basics.

Edited April 23 by FLips

[Devon Malcolm]

I finished Dredge and I'm absolutely bereft. Almost got 100% but couldn't find a blue crab or coelcanth at all. Definitely getting the DLCs when they're in a sale. What a great game.

Tried Bang-On Balls and I couldn't get into it. The first level is so overwhelmingly huge with so much going on that I was just confused. I'll definitely go back to it but I might watch a guide first to give me a leg-up with it.

Finally got A Hat in Time working and really enjoying it. Nothing hugely different in the 3D platformer / sandbox stakes but I love the little character quirks and interactions. Controls are spot on too.

Made the mistake of putting on Peglin again and I don't know why I like this stupid game that's almost entirely dependent on luck.

[The King Of Swing]

Fatal Fury City of The Wolves (PS5) 

Had the game in my library for some time and with a big update recently being released (including a new story mode, set following the events of arcade mode) I finally decided to jump in. 

Mostly playing Episodes of South Town mode, and it's been pretty fun so far. Overall a pretty solid fighting game, imo. 

Still kind of wild that a new Fatal Fury was released, after so many years. 

Also jumping in and out of Street Fighter 6's World Tour mode, determined to finish it this time. 

[RedTwoster]

I’ve been playing Sonic Racing Crossworlds on Switch 2, and I can see why people like it better than Mario Kart World, it’s absolutely fantastic. The racing is fun, the tracks are varied and even the items are more strategic than Mario - if you’re in the lead, for example, you’ll get more in the way of defensive items that (if used correctly) can help prevent a ‘blue shell’ moment. I can’t recommend this one enough.