What games are you playing 2: The revenge

seitora

Well-Known Member
Yeah, that's why I have been making that list. It's really intuitive for me, so once I go back into the TV world for the next dungeon, I should easily be able to finish it.
 

Oni_Rinku

Knower of Stuff
Not going to lie, Rise and Futaba's trophies are the only reason I never platinum'd Persona 4 Golden and the OG Persona 5. I've gotten Royal's plat trophy and currently only need to level up some characters in Strikers to plat that.
 

Karnath

Well-Known Member
Same way for me, I didn't even try and get Futaba's trophy(the only one I'm missing). Though Royals is considerably easier, I'm actually somewhat working on getting all of the Awards and Thieves' Den unlocks as well.
 
In the original P5, I'm missing seven trophies, but Futaba's voice lines ain't one of them.
 

Karnath

Well-Known Member
In the original P5, I'm missing seven trophies, but Futaba's voice lines ain't one of them.
Which ones? Futaba's was the only one that gave me trouble, though gathering all the materials to get the one for making all infiltrations tools was kinda annoying.
 
Which ones? Futaba's was the only one that gave me trouble, though gathering all the materials to get the one for making all infiltrations tools was kinda annoying.
I have that one too.
I haven't:
- Hit a homerun
- Caught the Guardian
- Read all the books
- beat all the games
- Bought all the drinks from the Vending Machines
- Unlocked all the hangout spots (I thought I had, but I guess I missed one?)
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Yeah, I'm thankful Royal didn't have the grindy Trophies.

Anyways, I did get Hardcore Risette Fan. Finally.
 
They saved all the grindy crap for the Awards in the Thieves' Den, and then cranked it up.
Yeah, but you don't need to do them for the Platinum, nor do you get a reward for completing the Den either.
 

Oni_Rinku

Knower of Stuff
Yeah, but you don't need to do them for the Platinum, nor do you get a reward for completing the Den either.
If you complete the Den, talk to Jose there and all persona's from the Compendium are free to summon and you gain an accessory that makes all enemy shadows not able to see you.
 
If you complete the Den, talk to Jose there and all persona's from the Compendium are free to summon and you gain an accessory that makes all enemy shadows not able to see you.
But if you've completed the Den, there's nothing left to do.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Umineko When They Cry

So, Episode 7 is actually putting the 'Answer' in Answer Arc. Wowza.

It moves away from the typical murder mystery shenanigans to bringing in a few new characters. Episode 7 basically shouts 'This series is a homage, deconstruction, and love letter to the entire mystery novel genre!', and it's really beginning to tickle my fancy bone. Just the way things have been set up during the entire series, both plot points and themes, and how a lot of it finally pays off is beautiful. The person who wrote all this is a damn genius, and I begin to lament how much of a timesink it takes to really get into it, because that same amount of time would surely turn off lots of other people.

The whole 'who is Beatrice' question isn't still really outright answered here, but it makes it a lot more clear now, and some previous questions start to get tied up. Beatrice = Shanon = Kanon, all separate personalities of Yasu

I mentioned before that the game sort of plays with 'are the scenarios we see actually occurring thanks to magic, or are they instead basically fanfics made up by people after the fact'. The fact the island blew up in a massive explosion, with only one survivor who refused to say anything up to her death, really helps push it towards the latter. However, another theme of the series is basically 'if you believe in magic then when lacking decisive proof that it's not magic, then it is indeed magic'. So a sop still to those believing in magic, not to mention it's usually been the more 'optimistic' scenario for a few characters.

In Episode 7's extra scenes, it also offers a potential 'true events' to the murder mystery. I did not see that coming. Damn. But Battler's fate was strangely left unseen in it.

For Episode 8, I guess there'll be a final showdown between Bernkastel/Aurora vs Battler/Beato, with a few potential pieces like Ange, Will, Leon, and Eva throw in. Not sure if Lambdadelta and Erika will return. Besides some more details around 'who is Beatrice', there's still a few other things to tie up. The circumstances of Battler's birth that Rudolf was gonna tell him about twice but got killed before he could say that basically will outright say Kyrie is his birth mother, the meaning of the second half of 07151129 (unless I missed something?), etc. Also, I expect some more usage of the Gold Truth because it hasn't had as much usage as it should for such a hugely important plot macguffin.

On another note...there is a riddle, the 'witch's epitaph', that has been a central part of the game off-and-on since the very first episode. In this episode, it's finally solved for the sake of the readers, though several characters have solved it in multiple scenarios prior. The riddle is actually fairly well written and devious in its presentation, and it is in fact solvable...in Japanese, if you know where to start looking. The very first line to start with solving the entire riddle from that hinges on the riddle creator's hometown, and everyone except for those who solved the riddle were all barking up the wrong tree from the start. There was literally one single throwaway hint at the riddler's true hometown in the entire series thus far (that his favorite food was areca nuts, which indicates he lived in Taiwan prior to the Japanese getting kicked out in World War II).

There is some wordplay in Japanese on two occasions, as well. The first requires a different, more archaic reading of one name and how it becomes Romanised. The second is an alternate reading of a kanji. Both are absolutely essential. There was a fan translation of the games as they released episode by episode, which was actually in the end brought on-board and polished up for an official English release. They don't even try to translate the first wordplay. For the second wordplay, the fan translation had no idea in the beginning it was crucial, and so it gets omitted entirely. Once the series as a whole was released, the line in question where the wordplay is made adds a new half a line as a clue that can be deciphered in English!

Supposedly, the Japanese fanbase was able to brute-force decipher the riddle earlier on. I can believe that. With my lack of Japanese history knowledge and inability to understand moonspeak, it would be impossible.


 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Persona 4 Golden

After playing P5 and P4 back-to-back...I had a random idea that Shin Megami Tensei mainline games that involve the end of the world are alternate timelines of Persona games where the Persona protagonist didn't defeat the big bad.

Anyways...

All Achievements finished.

Spellcards went by quickly. I was able to get enough Spellcards from visiting Chagall's Cafe on days when there was nothing else available to do. I finished all S-Links aside from the one that I couldn't for storyline issues in early January.

Sadly, I think I've proven that Rise's lines do not carry over into a NG+. This is because I got the Achievement on Adachi's third line, when Heat Riser is used, and the document I kept to track all the lines agreed that that was my 250th line. I would have had several of the true final boss' lines from the previous playthrough, plus I know I had a few of Kinino's lines in my first playthrough that I did not get this time around.

I played through Hollow Forest. The only cool parts of this stage are the environmental design and the music. The actual gameplay is hot garbage. No wonder everyone hates Marie so much. I had this on Very Easy with More Damage Given and Less Damage Received and it was still a grind. Her boss fight was pretty straightforward with no real gimmicks.

Also, I fought Margaret. This...feels like something that would have been a lot tougher in the original game. The reason why I say that is because in Golden, I have 11-Rank Naoto, who I was able to use to spam Shield of Justice with Chakra Ring for 80SP. Mind Charge + Megaloidaon? lolnope say hello to my full-party spell that blocks any attack once, even Almighty. I don't think gardening was in the original game either, so Bead Melons give me a lot of extra SP if I needed it (I think I only used Soul Food).

I got lucky and found the Reaper while going to fight the Secret Lab's extra boss. I cleared him with some Eggplants and Homonculus. If I was to try and track him down again for more ultimate weapons (I'm not), I would at least use a Persona with Dark/Light immunity for the protagonist.

Let's see, what else? Oh yeah, the Compendium. Wow, this is annoying. The regular Persona you don't have, it gives you a ??? slot so you know what level and Arcana of Persona you're using. The special Persona that require 4+ Persona to fuse, it flat-out tells you you're missing those Persona. But if you have a Persona that is the top of its Arcana and only requires a 3-Persona fusion, the game doesn't tell you you're missing that. So I had to trawl through and compare my Compendium to the list of Persona available to figure out what the last few were. Alice was my very last Persona.

Let's see, what else. Oh yeah, the game quiz show. That was amusing, even if some of the questions were extremely obscure.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Hyperdimension Neptunia Rebirth;1

Whew, what a mouthful!

Anyways, I picked this up a little while ago on sale. I went in full well knowing I'd get blasted with anime ecchi fanservice, so I'm not too surprised, though it's full of a lot more light-hearted moments than it is fanservice. Even the fourth wall breaking that Neptune and (to a lesser extent) Noire does aren't surprising. Some of the fourth wall jokes reference the original game that this is a remake of, so they fly by me.

The actual gameplay is...surprisingly decent. I haven't really seen much of a usage for the jumping mechanic yet, but exploring the dungeons is more than passable so it doesn't really get boring. Though I would love a quick exit button to leave the dungeon. The battle system is really a joy, too. It feels a little bit like a poor man's Tales system, being turn-based instead of real-time, but still fun to play around with and attempt to optimise. Rushing the enemies and trying to wipe them out first is a bit of a rush. It's rather a little easy to lose track of all the gameplay mechanics since they shove a lot of them at me really quick.

There is a decent amount of grinding, though. Not ungodly amounts, but definitely enough to be noticable. The third dungeon had back-to-back bosses where I cleared the first one easily at level 11, but had to go level to level 15 to get past the second one. I guess I got a little disappointed at the DLC characters since I had a few of them, and they made the game way too easy. I ended up just using them to help me power-level more quickly, and switched back to the story characters for the main fights instead.

Still, it is an odd sentiment that I'm regularly using healing items and life restoratives. I'm used to just toting around an inventory full of healing items that just keeps getting bigger as the game goes on. Actually being forced to use some early in a game feels unusual.

Neptune is your adorable cute ditzy light-hearted protagonist. Nobody really shines as a character here, though. I guess as long as the story writers could hit all the key notes and tropes for characters, they figured it would pass muster with the people likely to play these games </self-deprecating humour>

I absolutely adore that the game basically lets me buy lots of costumes and hairpieces to change out on the characters. I got Neptune in her Virtual Suit with some Hibiscus hair flowers.

7 hours in now. Just completed chapter 2.

For the record, I ship Neptune x Noire. I'll see if that changes once I get further in.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Umineko When They Cry

And finally finished the series with episode 8.

I feel kind of empty. In a good way. The way when you finish a long game that you liked, and find yourself wanting for more. In this case, there could be a bit more, but probably not a whole lot. Episode 8 does a really good job of bringing a conclusion to the series with some loose ends that I understand get partially answered in the manga adaptation. The theme of fantasy vs. mystery is done satisfactorily, although it takes a weird curveball with the ending option of believing a trick is magic or not-magic, where the magic option gives you a moderately happy ending, while the not-magic ending gives you a very cynical ending.

This is actually the first episode in the series that gave options and choices throughout the game. There's a quiz show about midway through where you can answer some 15 logic questions, some much more challenging than others. Then there's a murder mystery within a murder mystery, where you have to outright deduce the culprits instead of letting the narrative tell you*. Then there's the aforementioned ending choices.

Young Ange is absolutely cute and adorable.

For the murder mystery deduction, this was the chain of logic I went with:

Assume Nanjo is not the killer. Doing a trial run of the clues assuming he is the killer makes this impossible. Therefore, when he confirms a death, that person is dead. Notice that the parents' deaths were not confirmed by Nanjo, and were instead stated to be dead by Shanon, who is saying this second-hand for the kids who checked.

Krauss + Natsuhi - death confirmed by Nanjo

Jessica - death double-confirmed

George - death confirmed by Jessica whose death makes her confirmation valid

Shannon - death double-confirmed

Hideyoshi + Eva - death confirmed by George and stated second-hand by Shannon, neither of which can be culprits

Maria - George says she cannot kill anyone.

Rosa - Death confirmed by Maria and stated second-hand by Shannon, neither of which can be culprits

Genji, Godha, Kumasawa - death confirmed by more than one person, either directly by Nanjo or indirectly by Nanjo stated second-hand by somebody else who is not a culprit Kanon - death also confirmed

Rudolf + Kyrie - death cannot be confirmed, as Shannon only says it second-hand through Battler saying so. Battler is not eliminated as a culprit. Therefore, Battler + Rudolf + Kyrie are the culprits.

Would I recommend Umineko? That's hard to say. I enjoyed it. However, there is an enormous slog in the first half of about 20 hours of reading to get through from about mid-Chapter 3 to mid-Chapter 5 when the novelty wears off, before a lot of the series' themes and hints and clues really start to pay off beautifully. But when Umineko does bring it together, it's absolutely amazing.

It took me about 80 hours of reading to get through. There is a patch that adds voices from the PS3 game to the series which I learned about very late (Japanese voicing only) along with extra scene stills, which would undoubtedly balloon that up to 120+ hours if you're waiting for everyone to finish speaking.
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
@seitora,

That's a nice summary of Umineko. Tell me - is this the game with a character named "Battler" ? If not, I think it's from the same author. I started playing/watching it for a bit (=2 hours), but lost track.

-chronodekar
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
@seitora,

That's a nice summary of Umineko. Tell me - is this the game with a character named "Battler" ? If not, I think it's from the same author. I started playing/watching it for a bit (=2 hours), but lost track.

-chronodekar
It is indeed. Battler is the protagonist of the series as a whole, at least from the viewpoint perspective.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Hyperdimension Neptunia Rebirth;1

Finished Chapter 3.

The battle system continues to be surprisingly fun. I'm playing around with Combos somewhat to get some better crowd-clearing effiency.

The combat is turn-based attacks, but at the start of each character's turn, you can move around in a wide open arena. I'm failing to come up with any similar games right off-hand, but there's probably a hundred like them. With careful angling of your fighter's weapon, you can hit two or even three monsters in one attack and weaken or kill them in time for your next turn. Some weapons have twice or even thrice the range of most normal weapons, so I've been stuck using slightly weaker weapons because they can hit multiple monsters more easily.

Still, the game is getting rather hard on me, especially with the final battle for Chapter 3. I haven't really been toying around with the crafting system in the game, which would give me new weapons and armour. I'll have to start doing that pretty quick, though it'll likely be a slog to acquire the crafting materials for several of them. Money is also something I'm practically starving for so far in this game, barring some easy method to quickly gather some more.

You really need to keep track of the many different little systems this game has, because every one that you follow up will make your life a lot easier. I just didn't pay attention at all to Combos for several hours, but once I did the game got significantly less difficult. Ditto with EXE Drives, the techniques that can come at the end of Combos. Then there are Discs, which are basically equippable items that you can load with certain status effects like reducing physical damage, healing HP after a battle, or increasing EXP from monsters.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Hyperdimension Neptunia Rebirth;1

Completed chapters 4 and 5.

Yep, still a grind. Fortunately, the game gives me rare drops where I can toggle options like increased EXP, which I have. However, these are part of the crafting system, so one of the rare times I've been looking up a guide is to figure out where the drops are to craft these plans.

One of the other types of options the crafting system offers is the ability to change up the monsters in each dungeon, as well as the types of drops. Most weapons and armour and accessories come from getting rare drops in the field dungeons, which...kind of makes it a pain to even get stronger, because of course you have to first find the plans for new equipment, then craft it before it'll get told in stores. Despite this point in my craw, I'm still seriously enjoying the game.

I looked up the Achievements and...I don't think I need to do a NG+ for all of them? But I've missed a few items and such now that I would only be able to pick up in a NG+. Well, since levels carry over, it would be significantly easier to rush through.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Hyperdimension Neptunia Rebirth;1

Chapters 6 and 7 complete. Getting very close to the endgame here. I've basically stuck to using IF, one of the cover box characters, as my 'main'. Battles have three characters, but IF has enough agility she basically always goes first, and I can use her main Special Move to clear almost any crowd right off the bat. Special Moves require some charging up, but I can use her Special Move several battles in a row before I have to fight a normal battle or two. It's made the EXP grind significantly easier.

Again, surprisingly not quite as 'ecchi' fanservice as I was expecting. It's more mildly innocent and light-hearted in general. I guess there's the occasional pantyshot? Compa is the main one who seems to get this, since they flat-out give her a victory pose with a pantyshot.

This game has English and Japanese dual audio for voice acting. I've been sticking with the English. Nothing really sounds off, except for Noire's voice pitch, which seems a little out of place.

Anyways, re:my mention of getting rare drops from dungeons above. It turns out that I had to basically go through optional dungeons the chapter I get them in to be able to activate all the alternate drops for dungeons. This screws me over, since I need some drops that I can no longer get in this playthrough for specific items. Oh well. Something to know for a NG+ now.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Hyperdimension Neptunia Rebirth;1

Finished Chapter 8. Got the normal ending. I'm...actually pretty happy with how this game turned out? Combat's not especially deep, but it's at least versatile and fun enough I enjoyed it.

I would have gone for the True Ending, but I figured out that I had to do a NG+ anyways to get all achievements, so I'll grab it on my NG+. To unlock some of the endgame characters who count towards Achievements, I would have had to minmax MB upgrades (which basically gives you 'storage space' towards mostly crafting items, but also some gameplay upgrades and of course getting these endgame characters) from the start to get them all in one playthrough. I can get more MB in a second playthrough, so that's what I'll do. Blew through Chapter 1 already, but I'll have to run more slowly through from Chapter 2 onwards to get the optional dungeons and add-ons that I previously missed.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim

Taking a little break from HNR1 Achievement hunting, and getting settled in the next game I'll push through. I played this game way, way, waaaaay back when it first released, back in...2004? I never did defeat it. I got up to somewhere around when you make a contract with faeries, or fight a faerie, or something. Probably...6 hours in, I guess?

Anyways, I played through about an hour before I had to finish to go to work. I just defeated the first boss and getting ready to go through the underground trail to the next island. The game moves at a fairly brisk pace, and combat is fluid, which is always fun. The only issue I have thus far is combat is only one button to swing your sword, though you can jump and do either a mid-air swing or a down-stab. I'm hoping I get some more field moves to expand my repertoire soon, before the inevitable special techniques pop up.

Also, the fact the Canaan tribe are hybrid elf/fox-girl appearance makes Olha look really cute :)
 
Been playing Persona 5: Strikers the last few weeks on my PS5, and I think I actually like this combat a lot more than the original. It's like a hybrid between P5R and Musou games, and it feels a lot more engaging than the stylish, but pretty boring, turn-based combat from the mainline games. I've been playing it on normal, and aside from the optional bosses being overpowered, the only times I've been killed is when I went into a Boss fight with the worst set up possible (I.E boss is immune to the team's main elements, and dishes out their weaknesses).

I'm kind of disappointed that there's no DLC coming for this game, since adding in Crow and Violet would make for some interesting mechanics, like giving Crow a stance system, depending on if he's using Robin Hood or Loki.

They also got rid of costumes for this game, which is a little disappointing.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Hyperdimension Neptunia Rebirth;1

Finished all achievements. My first playthrough took about 28 hours. My second playthrough took about 8 hours, catching up on some stuff I missed the first time around. Then it took about another 6-8 hours to grind out some more battles to play through some of the optional content, as well as getting enough money to hit probably the toughest Achievement in the game, which is having enough lifetime money across all playthroughs. That one's not tough, but it is grindy.

So I guess about 28 hours for a playthrough, and 45 hours total. There's some more optional content I left on the table. The big thing is a colosseum with a good 40 or 50 optional fights that give out EXP and items. I played maybe a third of all the fights, but don't care enough to go through every single one of them. The other half that could easily blow up the amount of time spent on the game is crafting every single costume and accessory for each character. I imagine that would take a significant grind as well to get enough item drops. Once more, I don't care, so I won't. I do admit a little disappointment that I hadn't bothered getting the swimsuit outfits crafted for some of the characters until nearly the very end, because I'm still thirsty enough to like that, and shameless enough to admit it.

The game's battle system was surprisingly fun. It's not incredibly deep, but it's dynamic enough to keep from getting boring.

I was mildly surprised that for how the internet subculture seems to think this game has lots of ecchi fanservice, it really didn't. There were maybe three or four brief scenes in the entire game (like, 30 seconds tops each), and a couple of the less-useful characters have some more obvious pantyshots. Of course, once I got the Super Jump enabled to clear areas more easily, I found that there is more blatant pantyshots with that enabled. The higher a character jumps, the more her outfit flutters around. Huh.

With this, my 'active' Steam backlog that I normally keep at 10 games drops to 8. I intend to continue trimming that down for the time being to try and clear out the ones that have been on my list too long.
 
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