Completed recently:
Octopath 2
This felt very much like Octopath 1.5, if you've played the 1st one, it's an evolution of it, similar main mechanics here, not that it's a bad thing, it just doesn't evolve the genre much. There are some new things to do, and there was a pretty cool ending thing to do after all the main stories were done.
OST was as usual very good, and I quite like the 2.5D art that this type of game has, but I wish they'd tone down the blurring stuff a bit around the edges of your view. Voice acting was very good (I play this in Jpn audio with subs) and the story arcs for most characters were interesting, though naturally some were more interesting than others.
I disliked that you had to swap party members to be able to do the various actions each one had when using against townspeople. Gearing felt pretty meh in general, I wound up just clicking the auto-gear everyone option, because trying to juggle 8 characters and gear was not my idea of fun.
I'd like to have the ability to swap my party members around whenever I wanted without the need to visit a tavern, the current story character would probably need to be locked in but should be able to swap the other 3 around at will. Difficulty wise I found most encounters either way too easy, or too hard, as you run about and do story chapters, it can become difficult to strike the right balance for challenge as enemies don't scale with your level and your party can have unbalanced levels and such.
On the whole I enjoyed this one much like the 1st game.
FF7 Remake pt1 Intergrade
It's been ages since I played this, with Rebirth coming out soon I figured it wasn't a bad time to replay this one, and with Intergrade I can also do the Yuffie DLC.
This is still a great game I think, but it's not perfect. The game at times feels far too linear (something Rebirth looks like it will solve). Often I am stuck traversing through the same terrain a few times, and a lot of the routes you can go feel like corridors of a maze more than areas to explore.
Trying to min/max learning skills from weapons, and leveling materia isn't bad, but by the time you're almost done, the game is ending! I had the same issue in both the main game and the Yuffie DLC.
Speaking of, Yuffie DLC was new to me, and I enjoyed this one, I was sad it ended so soon because I was getting into it and enjoying the flow of this, in some ways more than the main game.
There are some reasons for this, but primarily:
- Combat with Yuffie is more fun than with Cloud and the crew, the mobility of her throwing star thing allowing you to teleport about, along with her elemental infusion techniques and ninjutsu stuff she can do is a lot more engaging to play for me.
- I enjoyed the Fort Condor mini-game a lot, and almost the first thing I did was running around finding people to play against. I beat all of them and became a grand-master in no time at all.
- It was fun just having a stupid goal of getting materia, without the gravity of the concurrent main story that was going on, it was a bit more light-hearted.
- I did the Soldier challenge and got 50K points, that took me a good couple of hours, a very hard challenge, but the gamer in me wouldn't admit defeat on that one so I kept at it until I got it.
Yuffie is a bit too "genki-girl" for me though, Tifa is still best girl by far.
I am awaiting releases of the following games:
Persona 3 Reload
FF7 Rebirth
Whilst I am waiting for these I am a little unsure what to do next. I am still playing Elden Ring (about 50 hours into my 1st run) but alongside that, I want something else to get stuck into. AC Valhalla is OK but it's a little samey, and I think Elden Ring is the better adventuring game, but I may flip back to it once I put that down.
I could try and get all of the endings on Triangle Strategy. I have not done them all.
I was considering playing the Trails games, but it's a very big commit, and some of those games are very old at this point, so am not sure if I want to commit the time to it, I also generally prefer newer games that have better graphics/quality of life (not that old games can't be good, but I just want the same sort of quality with great visuals!).
Also on my consideration list is the Xenoblade chronicle games, but for a similar reason (bit commit) I haven't started them yet.
Spiderman 2 is one of those cases where I started convincing myself I did not need to get it day 1 but when reviews started coming out, I took notice. That kind of warped my expectations and I was really bummed with it being so derivative overall, as I said earlier in the thread. Had no drive to do anything beyond the main story. The Wolverine footage that’s out there makes it feel more focused.
It was good but I am not a completionist either, I did all the main stuff and as much side stuff as I felt like, then chopped it in on resale. It felt like just another iteration of Spiderman mostly, but was still a decent game I think.
Real quick recommendation: if you have Ghostwire Tokyo and somehow haven’t played it since the Spider Thread update, do so for the couple of new missions taking place in a school. There is a (small) part in there that is extremely effective. Diapers recommended.
I don't have Ghostwire Tokyo but having looked at it before, it doesn't seem to be grabbing me as the type of game I'd enjoy necessarily, not even sure why, I just have this feeling lol!
This was a good one to play over Christmas. It makes a solid first impression with its depiction of Hogwarts itself, a sprawling labyrinth of a school that's filled with quests and environmental puzzles, every inch of it lovingly detailed with whimsical charm. For the simple pleasure of just exploring a place without necessarily following quest markers, it might be one of the all-time great game locations, and that's coming from someone who only has a casual interest in the movies (and hasn't read the books...).
The castle was a fantastic location and I almost think it was worth buying it and playing just to explore the castle and see some of the locations from the movies in the game.
It was also annoying that it gates an end-of-school-year event (presumably an epilogue) behind a high level requirement that I would probably have needed to do another 10+ hours of sidequests and copy-pasted open world bloat to reach.
Thanks for reminding me of this! I'd almost forgotten I also had this pointless end game thing that required me to go and grind some levels to be able to do it!