Topic: Games you've recently beat

Beat Dragon Quest Heroes 2. Mixed feelings. The game is good and a lot of fun to play, but I think the original did it better. Semi-open world aspect hurt it. I also found the the quests to be annoying. Some were timed, others required specific party members and some just had the strangest conditions (carry an egg across a battle field).

Story is good and the art style is beautiful, but the game couldn't hold my attention. Beat the main campaign in just under 30 hours, whereas I spent 60 hours with the original and got the platinum.
Bigger is not always better.

I finished off Heavy Rain just the other day, can't believe I missed out on this when it released.

Telltale's Game Of Thrones. After finishing the first 3 episodes, I would have said that this was one of Telltale's finest. But in the end, it turned out to be another typical TT game where choices don't particularly matter and story branches seem pointless. I did enjoy playing it, though, especially all of Mira's intrigue in King's Landing.

Finished FF12 the Zodiac Age.
It felt INCREDIBLE in may ways, especially coming from something beautiful but traditional, linear and narrative driven as Persona 5. This is more aligned to my current taste and I must admit I appreciate it much more now than when it originally released.

Minor gripes and considerations: Sakamoto's score is very peculiar and filmic, really unlike any other videogame soundtrack I heard and while this adds to 12's uniqueness in a way, I found myself longing for a more immediately recognisable melody. You can tell they must have noticed as well and placed the classic Final Fantasy theme on the title screen.
The characters are almost all well developed and relatable but... a bit bland? I'll fondly remember the 4 bros from XV for years, I camped with them, I listened to their banter, I bonded with them...these guys? IDK. They are nice the way acquaintances are nice.

Just finished Undertale. Not a game I'll be forgetting in a hurry! So full of character. Well worth playing.

@Quintumply Which routes?

@Ralizah No major spoilers, but to answer your question... Pacifist. Tempted to do a neutral/genocide run on my Vita, but I really liked the way the story wraps up on the pacifist route so I almost don't want to. Have you played much of Undertale?

@Quintumply All three routes, with the disturbing and challenging genocide route being my favorite. It's an incredibly different experience: almost like a horror movie. All of the routes tie together thematically to form one greater whole, imo.

@Ralizah Hmm. I'm really interested to see how much the three paths differ from each other. What are the parameters for the neutral story? Like, are there specific monsters I need to kill/not kill?

@Quintumply Well, if you got the pacifist ending, then you've already done the neutral route. The neutral route content feeds into the pacifist route content. It just requires you not to kill anyone, and do extra stuff after defeating omega flowey. At this point, all that awaits you is the genocide route, which requires you to kill every enemy in the game. Not just kill all enemies you come across, but systematically kill all the monsters in an area until a change is triggered (you'll know when this happens, because it's eerie and triggers a change in the background music), and then move on to the next and do the same. This is deliberately designed to resemble level grinding in a JRPG, which is where the satirical element first comes in. If you progress past an area without killing everything. then you abort the genocide run, and it just transitions into a neutral route run. Once this route is triggered, it causes the game to change in enormous and substantial ways. Actually, I'd argue that this game has two different plots: one for neutral/pacifist, and one for genocide. They're nothing alike. This route has new music, new boss battles, a substantially different plot, and, of course, a radically different ending.

@Ralizah Thanks very much, I might give it a go soon on my Vita

Just beat Until Dawn after a couple long sessions this week. I'm not much into the horror drama so I'm not sure why I even played it. (Since it was free on PS plus I guess I had nothing to lose except time) Well, I really liked it. I may even try for the platinum, we'll see. The ending and the plot points really were great. The story and characters had me invested the whole time. I don't care for all the jump scares and gore, but I have to admit, it kept me on the edge of my seat. The gameplay mechanics were also pretty good, shooting (or targeting, depending what you're holding) was very basic and there were quite a few QTE's spread throughout. The constant threat of permadeath for the different characters made for added anxiety with all the scare tactics added. Overall, definitely worth the 8-10 hour investment of time and even worth money to buy it if you didn't get it free on PS Plus.

@Ralizah after reading ur conversation about undertale im quite intrigued. It sounds like a very interesting game. I may have to check this game out for myself. It's a turned based rpg with old school graphics?

@ellsworth004 Visual design is influenced by a variety of older platforms, including the SNES and Amiga. The combat is interesting. When YOU attack, you're just timing when you hit a button to inflict maximum damage. When the enemy attacks, though, a little icon representing your soul is forced to dodge a variety of attacks. During harder boss battles, it almost feels like you're playing an arcade shmup as you're forced to navigate your icon through fierce waves of enemy attacks and bullets.

Definitely play it. It was one of my top games of 2015 when it released on PC.

Little Battlers Experience (3DS) - Got it because it's pretty much the only game on 3DS that lets you customize your own robot/mech. It wasn't a bad game by any means, just definitely intended for a younger audience compared to other JRPG's I've played (the dungeons were probably the most linear I've ever experienced, and even featured an arrow pointing the exact way to go on the map, if you didn't want to take the one or two small branches that had a chest, for example).

It's a decent game when it's all said & done (I'll admit the "Saturday Morning Cartoon" vibe it had going on was charming), but with the plethora of great JRPGs on the system, it's a pretty tough sale unless you really want something with a bit more of a sci-fi flair.

Cleared a big hurdle in my backlog in the form of Assasin's Creed: The Ezio Collection! This is the pinnacle of Assasin's Creed. I think people forget that the early games told incredible stories.

There will never be an Assassin more compelling then Ezio in my opinion. From his first breath to his last & all the in between you can't help but get attached to him.

As for the games themselves I also think they are the pinnacle of Assasin's Creed in terms of awe inspiring moments. The Assasin's Tombs in AC2, the beautifully crafted Rome in Brotherhood, to finally giving Altair his last rights in Revelations are moments of sheer epicness.

Performance wise, AC2 was pretty bad. Bunch of glitches, crashes & popping textures, but Brotherhood & Revelations ran pretty flawlessly. In fact Revelations in particular could pass as a current gen game.

Rounding up the 3 games the collection includes AC: Embers & AC: Lineage. They are a great watch- particularly Embers (Sofia's Letter... ).

Really hope AC gets back to this. I'm hoping The Shroud from Syndicate can lead to the revival of the franchise... .
Not letting Desmond go just yet.

Beat Undertale last night. The ending was great, but due to a "mistake" at the beginning I don't seem to have got the ending I wanted. I'll replay it on Vita I think.

Kingdom Hearts 1 final mix and Kingdom Hearts Re:Chains of memories!
I'm currently playing through these games: Kingdom Hearts 2, COD Infinite Warfare, Last Guardian, Nier Automata, Destroy all Humans, Fifa story mode, Game of Thrones, Just Cause 3, Gta 5, Persona 5, Xcom 2, Sniper Elite 3 and my current favorite...PYRE

Persona 5. After 112 hours, I'm not sure what to say, except that it lived up to and exceeded all of my expectations. Easily the best Persona game in the series, and perhaps one of the best JRPGs I've played overall. I don't know. I'll need to get some distance from it first to gain perspective. But it was a wonderful experience. Fully worth owning a PS4 to play.

@Ralizah did you platinum it? Is it possible for me to beat it in less time if I'm not trying to platinum?