Topic: Games you've recently beat

Just finished the campaign on Diablo 3 and thought it was really good to be fair. Maybe a little short and a little easy… but I’m sure that is where Adventure Mode and a Hardcore playthrough will come in to play. Still a lot of work to do if I want that platinum… but am quite excited to try all of the other charcuterie classes etc.

@HallowMoonshadow @nessisonett I’ve been interested with your comments on the Cold Steel games, since I have a nagging in my brain to go back and finish the first game. Now I’m thinking it might not be worthwhile unless I really have the time and energy to devote to playing Azure/Zero and then ToCS 3 and 4. It sounds like ending with #2 would leave a bad taste in my mouth for the series.

@HallowMoonshadow I must have completely forgot to mention the literal child in bondage gear, you know it’s bad when that slips your mind trying to cover the rest! Unfortunately, she seems to be staying around in 3 so far, but I guess they’re trying to give her some sort of character arc at least. 3 feels like a different game at least (not just due to it running like ass on Switch compared to 1+2 on PS4) and the new cast is smaller which helps massively in terms of them not having a Gaius. Although I did have a flashback to a scene from 2 which I didn’t remember so I looked it up and apparently crucial plot details about one of the teachers are only given out if you play New Game Plus and collect all of a new type of item 😂

@Th3solution The problem then with starting with Zero is that the protagonists of the Sky games are the other two party members, concluding their arc from those games. Until they put that trilogy on PS4/5, you either have to blindly stumble through certain parts like Foxy or spend about 2 years catching up on Vita like me.

@nessisonett In some alternate reality where sleep and making a living are unnecessary, and where I can hook myself up to a feeding tube and a bladder drain to bypass the annoyance of spending time and energy with sustenance and elimination, then maybe I’ll have time to get around to playing all the games I want to and also get through all of the Legends series. 😅

@HallowMoonshadow I take it back about Cold Steel 3. About 8 hours in and we’ve got a full on sexual assault passed off as a joke as the other girl legitimately cries on the floor. One of the roughest scenes I’ve seen in a game possibly ever. It was distasteful in one scene in Azure and that game had PSP graphics, it’s so much worse in HD.

... I... really have no idea how to reply to that all @nessisonett. Falcom sure love making me feel a little uneasy and uncomfortable. Please don't tell me it was whatsherface again who did this?

Honestly @Th3solution I'd say it best to probably just skip the Trails series. If I recall you weren't all that enamoured with Cold Steel 1 and it's just way too much of a time investment to get caught up and actually "get" everything.

I mean you barely have time for the other games you wanna play! Committing yourself to a... What? 10 or 11 or so jrpg game series -a good quarter of which aren't readily available- is just a fool's errand!

@HallowMoonshadow Yeah, that would be quite the undertaking, especially given how many new games there are to play nowadays along with most people's large backlogs. At this point after reading about the writing in the Cold Steel games, I will stick to part of my plan and play through the Crossbell trilogy (Trails from Zero, Trails to Azure, and Trails into Reverie). That's probably the strongest group in the series anyways, and it's probably for the best time wise.

@HallowMoonshadow A different character entirely! She was pretty bad in Azure but it at least didn’t have the bloody ‘comedy’ music playing. It’s like a series which actively sabotages itself.

@nessisonett Christ. These horror stories you keeping posting about the Cold Steel games aren't exactly motivating me to go back and push across the finish line with Sky SC (stopped near the end last year and have really been struggling to find the motivation to dive back in, lol).

@HallowMoonshadow I was a big Jrpg fan in the past, having played almost all of the Final Fantasy and Persona games over the years. I’ve always considered it one of the genres which I owe much of my gaming enthusiasm to. I’ve toyed with trying to keep my appreciation of the genre alive by playing the Trails series, or the Tales series, or Y’s, or the Dragon Quests, etc. But I do think you’re right that due to time constraints I have to just appreciate some of these from afar, especially those that have one long narrative thread that involves a knowledge of so many entries in order to really understand

Good luck with that @KilloWertz. Seems like a smart enough descison!

Kinda wish I had choice a few years back but with ness's experience of Steel 3 and the parts of the first 2 for me already poisoning the well I won't be partaking in any Falcom game anytime soon.

I wondered when you were gonna chime in @Ralizah. You're supposedly on the good part of the series too! 🙄

... I'm starting to think Trails fans and the proclaims of it's "great writing" is a whole load of crock.

Oh yeah don't get me wrong @Th3solution play all the JRPG's you want (and likewise on the JRPG genre really opening my eyes to the medium).

Just with the Trails/Legends Of Heroes series that's a monumental effort for seemingly little payoff seeing as it's still bloody ongoing with no end in sight?

Besides I still need to get you to at least give Divinity Original Sin II you got a shot. Ya know... A game with good writing

@HallowMoonshadow 😄 Absolutely. I thought your might promote Legend of Dragoon as a consolation rpg to enjoy, but DOS2 would definitely make sense because it’s relatively ‘modern’. It’s still on the docket. I am probably at the point where long rpg games have to contain a self-contained story rather than be part of a long narrative thread, unless I’ve already played something from the series. So I’m going to keep up with ongoing story based games like Horizon, GoW, Death Stranding, etc where I’ve already started the journey, but if I’m already behind, then unfortunately I think you’re right and I just have to cut my losses with series like Trails, Kingdom Hearts, or even Yakuza. It’s just too much for me to get caught up. Even shorter series with cohesive stories that I have always been curious about like the Metro trilogy or Devil May Cry are proving to be difficult for me to invest in because of the need to catch up through old games. I know I could always watch YouTube videos to get up to speed and just skip to the most modern installments, but somehow that feels like cheating. 😅 So for the time being it’s probably a good idea to stick with one-off game narratives or series that I already got in early on.

Speaking of, have you finished LoD yet? How’s it coming along?

@HallowMoonshadow Thanks. I know it is a smart decision because I came up with it. At least I waited to have my smart decision for the month until late in the month. lol

I'm not going to criticize that stance as I get it, but it seems like the Cold Steel games are the main culprits in Falcom's catalog. I know I didn't experience anything like that in Ys VIII, with just a sexual joke or two at Laxia's expense being perfectly innocent. I'm guessing things aren't too bad in the Crossbell trilogy either (I haven't read about many problems in them at least).

I've thought that for a while, since the Sky games are hardly well-written. There's weird incest fetishism. The first game progresses at a snail's pace. The second one is ultra-formulaic and features pretty generic anime bad guys. The character writing is pretty heavily tropey as well.

All the claims of "good writing" seem to be connected to the extreme serialization from game to game, like in basically every long-running story-heavy TV show. If anything, I'm more impressed with games that don't need fifteen RPGs to build up interesting character dynamics and complex politics-heavy plotlines.

The Ys games are so underappreciated, man. They manage to have a consistent world across the entire series would requiring players to play each entry in order. While the stories aren't amazing, they're also devoid of all the problematic sexual assault and homophobia so far that seems to pass for characterization in the Trails series. The absolute worst thing I've seen in the four games I've played to date is the main character stumbling in on someone naked and getting smacked, and that scene is over and done with pretty much immediately. The games also don't bore you with hours and hours of needless dialogue, preferring to get you back into the action ASAP.

GTA V. Oh feels so nice that after a couple of weeks of consistent playing having beat the story plus some side content. Iam not sure why but I almost feel kind of overwhelmed to a degree.. I think it must have something do with that GTA V is a game that have that I have wanted to play and beat for some time but not really got into until a few weeks ago. Always prioritizing some other game. Its strange, but very nice feeling.

Incest, e.g. in the case of ToCS a relationship between an older brother and younger sister, is fairly common in Japanese media. Another example at the top of my head would be Sword Art Online. I think things like this and other stuff we deem inappropriate in the West are more acceptable in Japan. I'd be more shocked if I saw stuff like this in Western media in all honesty. But I've come to accept that Japan simply has a different culture and this is just how things are over there. I'm sure there are Japanese people who find us Westerners weird for numerous reasons.

I've also come to the realisation that the more games I play, the more formulaic I perceive the games. For every 100 games I play, maybe 5-10 titles stand out to me. We just do the same things over and over in games nowadays. Doesn't mean it's not fun though.

It's hard to get attached to games and their worlds if you don't spend a lot of time with them. That's why I love long games like Persona 4 Golden and Trails of Cold Steel.

You mention long-running story-heavy TV shows. I'm currently watching The Walking Dead and that show is very formulaic. The same thing happens in most seasons. The reason why I still watch it though is because I love The Walking Dead universe, the characters, the plot twists and so on. I vastly prefer a show like The Walking Dead over something like Chernobyl or any other short show. It's just so hard to care about characters when you haven't known them for long. I mean, they're showing off scenes from the early seasons in the final season of The Walking Dead and I'm getting teary-eyed because I've been following the show since I was in high school. Imagine getting teary-eyed from a show like The Walking Dead, lol.

@Ralizah The thing that’s different about the writing in the trials games is how broad it is. If you talk to the same NPC on a different day they will say something different that’s in line with who they are. In contrast, something like Final Fantasy, 7 crisis core if you talk to the same NPC in a different chapter they will say exactly the same thing, unless they give you a quest.

It’s different from branching narrative, or a good main story. But it certainly an example of good writing.

@Ralizah With respect to the difference between Sky and Cold Steel, I don’t really remember much creepy stuff between Agate and Tita cause y’know she was like 12 and he was a full grown man. Let’s just say that changes when they reappear in the series. Like to Agate’s credit he looks visibly uncomfortable when literally every other character tells him he should bone the child but man, who the hell writes these games? I swear, with every game it feels like they can sneak a bit more of their own fetishes into the series. All it’s missing now is for the female characters to have visible green fart clouds like Shrek.

@Ralizah That would be Adol stumbling in on Laxia while she was wrapped in a towel after a bath. That scene I thought was amusing at least since there was an innocence to it to an extent.

I will likely never bother with the Cold Steel games now after reading all of this, but does the Crossbell trilogy at least keep the issues to more of a minimum than the Cold Steel games do? They are supposed to be excellent games (at least Zero and Azure for sure) , so I would still like to play them.