Topic: What (Non-PS4) game are you playing??

@KratosMD There is a way of not killing him, iirc correctly you basically have to talk to him whenever you can exhausting all his dialogue, make sure his survives whenever you summon him, and kill the maggot thing on the other side of the massive stone gate where he dies. It's quite convoluted and not sure how you would know all the steps with following a guide.

The first time I played the game I hated Sens Fortress lol. But subsequent play throughs I appreciated the level design and is now one of my favourite sections in any Soulsborne game. When you finally get to the roof and outside, my what a feeling!

@KratosMD I've only completed it once but played through it 3 times, giving up the first two times on 360 lol. I'm not great at replying games but as with all the Soulsborne games you can only get everything with multiple play throughs. When you start a NG+ you keep all of your gear, but the world resets so any bosses or npc's that died will be alive again, but you will not be able to warp until you get the Lordvessel. Enemies are tougher but also drop way more souls. The are two different endings depending on the choice you make after the final boss. You could always back up a save to the cloud/usb if younreslly wanna see both.

@JohnnyShoulder or YouTube it

@KratosMD Yeah patches appears in all the Soulsborne games and he is a right cad in all the games.

Interested to hear what you think of the DLC, it has some of the best and toughest bosses in the game. And some weird ass enemies to boot.

@KratosMD I never managed to finish DS1 as I bought a PS4 whilst playing it and hit a point where I wasn't enjoying the game and moved on. I finished DS3 and Bloodborne and couldn't ever imaging replaying those games as I'm just delighted to finish them! Similarly, I never played the DLC of any either.

The "true" ending to DS3 was ridiculous to get though. I have no idea how anyone would ever get it without a guide.

@Thrillho Is the true ending of DS3 worth the effort?

@Thrillho You don't get a trophy for watching it on YouTube...

@Th3solution Personally no, and it might not make much sense unless you've played the other games. They are deliberately ambiguous.

@Th3solution I still have no idea what happened in that ending. But that goes the same for most of the “story” in those games for me.

@Thrillho @JohnnyShoulder Actually reading up on it the true ending of DS3 isn't such a ball ache to get, and am pretty sure that is the one I got and I didn't go massively out of my way to get it.

Now the Lord of Hollows Ending (which is considered the 'best')is a whole different kettle of fish.

@KratosMD I felt the same with the Royal Wood, and was mega disappointed with it and found it a bit boring. Oolacile made up for it though. I found the constant crying in the background quite unsettling!

Astorias is a real fan favourite not just because it is an awesome fight but cos of all the lore attached to him. When you get into the swing of things it almost feels like a dance. Kalameet was one of the most satisfying bosses for me as I had several goes at him, both solo and with summons. Got really close a few times, like the last sliver of health but always managed to get me. When I finally beat him, i almost blew the roof off with a loud roar! I actually when back to those bosses and helped other players out which was really good fun as the remaster ups the number of players you can have in one session.

Started Cuphead this morning, and defeated a few bosses and Run n Gun stages. This game is incredible! I can't believe I waited so long to play it.

The presentation, controls, boss patterns, etc. are all so polished and creative.

Fishing Star World Tour on Switch - A more arcadey & colorful fishing game that feels right at home on a Nintendo device (I think it was a retail title in Japan, but here in the west it's just a $30 eShop game). It's the first time in years I've actually enjoyed motion controls (it has regular controls as well, but things seem a bit too easy with them, as it seems like it was balanced with motion controls in mind). Great way to relax between sessions of bigger games or work. Also gets me in the mood for Spring which is a plus, lol.

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations on 3DS. So far it's excellent, perhaps even better than the first two games. It has plenty of the goofy characters and the excellent plot that the series is great at.

It was fun to see Godot. I'm still unsure whether he's excellent at being a prosecutor or lousy at it. Plus he's relatable as he has the same love for coffee that I do.

I recently started replaying Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (NDS). Also trying to finish Zone 4 in Crypt of the Necrodancer (PS Vita) with Cadence, although, after many, many days of struggling with it, I'm losing my patience. It's so unfair to force the player to play through the entire zone if they can't survive going through it plus two boss battles in a row.

@Ralizah How does Days of Ruin compare to Dual Strike? The aesthetic looks very different - does this take anything away from the charm the series is known for?

I'm cautiously anticipating Cadence of Hyrule. Hopefully it won't be as difficult as that!

@mookysam It's a bit of a controversial entry in the series. It has the most balanced gameplay in the series (a really far cry from Dual Strike in that regard), which it accomplishes by mixing up a bunch of the units from previous games for new ones (the more gimmicky and overpowered units are gone, and lots of existing units have been re-touched so that pretty much everything is useful and has a place in a battle; personally, I really like the bikes, which are a new kind of infantry unit that are war faster on roads, and dusters, which are a nice, all-purpose air unit) and drastically nerfing CO powers. Regarding charm... I mean, it's pretty bleak. The world is dead, diseases ravage many of the communities struggling to survive in the post-apocalyptic landscape, and topics such as human experimentation, political corruption, genocide, the pointless savagery of war, etc. are touched upon. It still has moments of humor (granted, they're mostly buried in optional dialogues during missions, but they're still there), but the light-heartedness is pretty much gone. It also seems to be unconnected to the universe of the previous games.

As you've seen, the aesthetic is extremely different. The cartoony character designs of previous games have been replaced with more realistic looking portraits, and the color scheme is very muted.

From what I've played (the original, most of Dual Strike, and, of course, this), this one has the most in-depth and challenging campaign in the series. The war room is entirely absent from this iteration, but a lot of the maps you'd play in that have been integrated into the main campaign in the form of optional trial maps.

In general, there's a lot less fluff here than in Dual Strike.

The music is pretty good, too.

This game actually had online multiplayer, although, understandably, that's probably not very useful to someone playing the game today.

And, yeah, I'm hoping Cadence of Hyrule is a bit less ridiculous in its final stretch as well. I spent another hour or two last night trying to conquer it, and... no dice. Also, apparently the final story character is some insane, hardcore challenge: she dies the instant you miss a beat. Which means I'd be lucky to survive even one level intact, let alone an entire zone. So I'm pretty close to just giving up and talking about it in a somewhat incomplete state.

The pixel art in that game looks SO much nicer than the art in Necrodancer, though, which is quite underwhelming in comparison.

I am playing The Shapeshifting Detective on IOS.

Finally got back to Digital Devil Saga (after months of not playing it, so it took a little while to re-orient myself and remember what I needed to do). I'm juggling too many JRPGs now, so I need to start knocking them down with merciless precision.

First up: Digital Devil Saga.
Then: Final Fantasy IX.
After that: Final Fantasy XII.

Hoping I can get through the first two before Fire Emblem comes out and saps all my free time.

@Ralizah Oh I'm in the same boat. Trails in the Sky Second Chapter has been on the backburner for months and I don't even remember what distracted me. Hopefully I can get back into it once I finish Pokémon Let's Go. My handheld backlog across various devices is practically all JRPGs so I basically see myself becoming some sort of Terminator to get through them.

Digital Devil Saga is also on hold for me at the moment because my PS2's disc drive is having issues. It keeps crashing mid-session (usually when it tries loading something) if it reads discs at all. I think the console will end up having to go in the bin.

@mookysam Ouch. I had to replace my original thin PS2 with someone's phat PS2 a couple of years ago once the laser went. It's enormous, but has been working well. If that went, though, I'd probably just burn the rest of my PS2 games and play them on PCSX2 with some enhancements to the internal resolution (and nothing else, because I like my emulated games to stick close to the original experience on the native hardware). Silent Hill 3 looked pretty darn good when I played it this way.

I have a mess of Atlus games haunting me. DDS, which I've made some pretty good progress in since that last post. Nocturne, which I never finished back in the day and need to restart. Persona 3, which I also never finished back in the day. Soul Hackers, which... you get the idea. And my copy of Strange Journey Redux is just sitting around, completely unplayed. I've owned it for a year now.

Rune Factory 4 has been sitting on my shelf for four years or so, quietly judging me. Never got around to it.

I have TitS (snrk!) SC on my PC, but I'm not playing that until there's nothing better to do. The original was kind of boring, but I'd like to eventually resolve the cliffhanger it ended on.

If I had any sense to me, I wouldn't be downloading Dragon Quest XI S this year. Or buying a mess of Nintendo-published Switch games (I have 4 vouchers reserved so far).