The Backlog Check-in Vol. 152: 11/28/20: Immortals: Fenyx Rising/Twin Mirror Edition

[Phaseknox]

Played: Nothing

Finished: Nothing

Playing: ?

Added: Frane: Dragons’ Odyssey, Gravity Rush, Gravity Rush 2, Mega Man X Legacy Collection, Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection, What Remains of Edith Finch

Games releasing this week
Absolute Drift: Zen Edition
Chronos: Before the Ashes
Commandos 2 HD Remaster
Darq Complete Edition
Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age Definitive Edition
Duck Life Adventure
El Hijo: A Wild West Tale
Empire of Sin
Fault: Milestone 2 Side Above
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light
Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise
Guntastic
Haven
Immortals: Fenyx Rising
Morbid: The Seven Acolytes
Nine Witches: Family Disruption
Per Aspera
Phogs!
Pretty Princess Party
Project Wingman
Ruinverse
Sam & Max Save the World Remastered
Shiren the Wanderer
Shoot 1UP DX
Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythmic Adventure Pack
Twin Mirror
Wildfire

[crimson_tide]

Played: Yakuza 7

Beat: Nothing

Bought: Nothing

This week: My newly broken Yakuza 7

Sooooo...I spent all week getting to and then beating the business minigame. It took 6 or 7 hours. Most of that was last night because I barely played this week, I was fixated on it and didn't finish until almost 3 in the morning . j, for the love of God, DO NOT continue until you beat the minigame. There are two ridiculous perks you get for seeing it through besides the obvious gamebreaking amounts of money you get as go go through in bonuses. At least get to the top 100. You get one really cool thing there. Then, at the end...I can't wait. I should have this sewn up at the end of next week now.

Again, if you want to absolutely break this game the way you can break Yakuza 0's economy, please be sure to spend time with management mode. It's strangely addicting once you get into the loop of it and it is exceedingly worth it!

Oh and Phase, is Dragon Quest 11S on PS4 too good to be mentioned with all that shovelware coming out this week so you rightly left it off the list? I bet that's the reason . Also Phase, if and when you play MMZ collection, please please let me know if you can figure this cyber elf nonsense system out. I just couldn't and got really stuck.

[argyle]

Games added: Resident Evil 3

Last week: Finished nothing, played AC Valhalla, SW Jedi Outcast, Streets of Rage IV, Blossom Tale

This week: More of those

All 4 of those games are pretty great. Took my Switch down to my folks' for Thanksgiving, so that's when I mainly played Streets of Rage & Blossom Tale. Streets is the better of the two, it's just a fantastic game. I was a SNES guy back in the day, so I have no nostalgia for SoR, but it's basically a Final Fight knock-off anyway. This is a great update of that type of game, looks and plays great. I'll wrap it up this week I'm sure. Blossom Tale is good, but it's almost too much of a Zelda Link to the Past knock-off. It's pretty much exactly that game. I mean, copy from the best & all, so it's still fun - but a game needs to bring something new to the table.

Really digging both Valhalla and Jedi. Valhalla had a story mission that was just fantastically done. Without giving anything away, you have to investigate to find a traitor, but unlike every other game that's ever done this type of mission, it isn't just a "follow the waypoints & then pick the obvious choice". You REALLY have to investigate, and even when I made my final choice I was 100% sure I had picked the right person. I spent a lot of time in that mission, and I enjoyed every bit of it. I was actually invested in the storyline. If the rest of the game is that that level, I can't wait to play more.

I think the first time I tried Jedi, last year I believe, I messed up by trying to go to planets they didn't tell me to go to in an effort to be "thorough" with my exploration. This time I'm going where they say and having a MUCH better time. Feels like they intend for you to handle the clean-up at the end of the game.

Oh and Phase, is Dragon Quest 11S on PS4 too good to be mentioned with all that shovelware coming out this week so you rightly left it off the list? I bet that's the reason .

I noticed this too, was waiting for you to point it out.

EDIT: Oh, and I ordered a few things in the sales last week. Actually a few more games than I intended - not a ton, but GS ran a buy 1 get 1 sale on PS4 / Xbox One / Switch games Thurs. night, and that combined w/ the sale prices lead to some killer deals. The only thing that made it in so far was RE3, but the rest should show up over the next week.

[Phaseknox]

Oh and Phase, is Dragon Quest 11S on PS4 too good to be mentioned with all that shovelware coming out this week so you rightly left it off the list? I bet that's the reason .

Fixed.

[canedaddy]

Played recently: Little Big Planet Vita, Divinity: Original Sin II - Definitive Edition

Finished: LBPV

Added to backlog: DOS Dos

Current backlog: 34 (15 PS4, 7 Vita, 7 3DS/DS, 5 PS2)


I finished LPB but I'm still monkeying around to see how many levels I can ace/master. It won't be 100%... there are some toughies in there, and my ancient reflexes are not up to the task.

I decided it was time for a meaty RPG so I picked up Divinity: Original Sin II. It seems great so far. Did any of you dudes play it, and if so, did you finish it?

[jfissel]

Finished: Nothing

Now Playing: Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Added to Backlog: Nothing

Current Backlog: 40 games

Put a tremendous amount of time into Yakuza and some into Miles Morales over the last week. They're both really good.

Sooooo...I spent all week getting to and then beating the business minigame. It took 6 or 7 hours. Most of that was last night because I barely played this week, I was fixated on it and didn't finish until almost 3 in the morning . j, for the love of God, DO NOT continue until you beat the minigame. There are two ridiculous perks you get for seeing it through besides the obvious gamebreaking amounts of money you get as go go through in bonuses. At least get to the top 100. You get one really cool thing there. Then, at the end...I can't wait. I should have this sewn up at the end of next week now.

Again, if you want to absolutely break this game the way you can break Yakuza 0's economy, please be sure to spend time with management mode. It's strangely addicting once you get into the loop of it and it is exceedingly worth it!

I think I'm somewhere in the top 20 in the management game. I'm sure I could beat it with the employees I have now, but I wanted to recruit some of the people on the street and in sidequests. Just did some more story stuff - I'm in the middle of chapter 6.

Valhalla had a story mission that was just fantastically done. Without giving anything away, you have to investigate to find a traitor, but unlike every other game that's ever done this type of mission, it isn't just a "follow the waypoints & then pick the obvious choice". You REALLY have to investigate, and even when I made my final choice I was 100% sure I had picked the right person. I spent a lot of time in that mission, and I enjoyed every bit of it. I was actually invested in the storyline. If the rest of the game is that that level, I can't wait to play more.

Sounds like a fun mission! I wish developers would do things like that a little more often.

[Phaseknox]

I decided it was time for a meaty RPG so I picked up Divinity: Original Sin II. It seems great so far. Did any of you dudes play it, and if so, did you finish it?

I played it, but I didn’t finish it. I enjoyed it for a while, but the slow paced time consuming tactical turn-based battles became too tedious for me. Each and every battle encounter was a slow slog, and I found them to be a little on the difficult side even on easy. I put it on story mode which is the easiest setting, and while it was more reasonable I still found the battles to be too long winded. There’s no quick battles, they’re all long and drawn out. I also found the game to be too talk-y with characters and NPCs prattling on forever. The lack of any kind of cinematic flare, scripted events, or set pieces didn’t help matters any, either. I realize that it’s a throwback to classic computer RPGs, but those have never really been my thing.

[canedaddy]

I played it, but I didn’t finish it. I enjoyed it for a while, but the slow paced time consuming tactical turn-based battles became too tedious for me. Each and every battle encounter was a slow slog, and I found them to be a little on the difficult side even on easy. I put it on story mode which is the easiest setting, and while it was more reasonable I still found the battles to be too long winded. There’s no quick battles, they’re all long and drawn out. I also found the game to be too talk-y with characters and NPCs prattling on forever. The lack of any kind of cinematic flare, scripted events, or set pieces didn’t help matters any, either. I realize that it’s a throwback to classic computer RPGs, but those have never really been my thing.

There is a lot of talking, but so far I'm finding it well done and interesting. I also don't mind the lack of cinematic flare. I do wish the combat was like Diablo/Norrath... I can live with the turn-based setup, but it would be more fun as an action RPG. It seems crazy that there's couch co-op with the turn-based battles. No idea how that could work well.

I'm enjoying it a lot more than the first one, which I bailed on after a few hours.

[crimson_tide]

So I managed to not buy DQ11S. Some ish went down in Yakuza 7 last night and now I am stuck here through the bitter end. I was going to trade off between the two but nope, they did a thing and as goofy and tonally chaotic this game is, they done gone and tugged at the strings on my tiny, cold heart. I have to know how this plays out.

Ok, now j: up to chapter 7 now. Done every substory that has come up except Dragon Kart ones (beat the first race but it was hard and I didn't feel like continuing at the moment). Love love love Poundmates. Loving it thus far. But the hell is up with dealer weapons! I love the job but there's no good cards to buy and even with a fully leveled up workshop, there's nothing I can craft. I found an ok-ish deck bit you can't upgrade it! I rather dig the jobs. What's your setup? Right now I'm running hero, idol, going to be alternating musician/riot cop and finally dealer (might change to night queen until I get some solid weapons for this class). Haven't dabbled with dlc jobs just yet. Are you changing jobs a bunch? Also, if you haven't made Kasuga a construction guy (can't remember the job, it's a red suit and it uses a hammer) do it immediately. You get a job perk you can use without the job equipped that let you destroy walls to find stuff in the world. That's how I found a shop with gold keys!

Also, it has Open Your Heart from Sonic Adventure to play at the bar. If it had In Live and Learn from Adventure 2, His World and All Hail Shadow from Sonic 06, this would hands down be my game of the year. If they could be performed for karaoke, it would simply be game of the generation.

[jfissel]

So I managed to not buy DQ11S. Some ish went down in Yakuza 7 last night and now I am stuck here through the bitter end. I was going to trade off between the two but nope, they did a thing and as goofy and tonally chaotic this game is, they done gone and tugged at the strings on my tiny, cold heart. I have to know how this plays out.

Ok, now j: up to chapter 7 now. Done every substory that has come up except Dragon Kart ones (beat the first race but it was hard and I didn't feel like continuing at the moment). Love love love Poundmates. Loving it thus far. But the hell is up with dealer weapons! I love the job but there's no good cards to buy and even with a fully leveled up workshop, there's nothing I can craft. I found an ok-ish deck bit you can't upgrade it! I rather dig the jobs. What's your setup? Right now I'm running hero, idol, going to be alternating musician/riot cop and finally dealer (might change to night queen until I get some solid weapons for this class). Haven't dabbled with dlc jobs just yet. Are you changing jobs a bunch? Also, if you haven't made Kasuga a construction guy (can't remember the job, it's a red suit and it uses a hammer) do it immediately. You get a job perk you can use without the job equipped that let you destroy walls to find stuff in the world. That's how I found a shop with gold keys!

Oh man, there's so much in this paragraph I don't even know where to begin.

- I'm in chapter 9 right now, level 25
- I think I've cleared all substories so far (don't see any on the map). As with other Yakuza games, some of them have been absolutely bananas!
- Side stuff: I have not raced in Dragon Kart except for the substory race. Finally got to the number one spot in the management game, and I've Been keeping up pretty well with Part-time Hero stuff. Dabbled in the arcades a bit, but haven't played casino games, shogi, or mahjong.
- Poundmates are fun and they can really provide a great assist in battles!
- Job-wise, I've changed a few times but I think I'm going to stick with the same jobs for a while since switching to a low rank job can send your overall stats plummeting. I've currently got a Hero, Enforcer, Idol (wearing Haruka's costume, btw - only way to do it, lol), and then a Clerk. I can't remember the name of the weapon, but my Idol has a microphone that "brainwashes" enemies like 20% of the time...what this means is that they'll attack other enemies or just stand there if they are the only enemy. It's incredibly useful in fights with harder enemies. I've tried Breaker, Musician, Foreman (the construction guy you mentioned), and then all of the default jobs for each character.
- I can't remember when this unlocked, maybe chapter 7, but a new collectible started showing up around town. And I literally searched every inch of the map to find 94 of them on my own...reminds me of the time when I spent hours searching all over Vice City for those statues. Not sure how many there are, but enemies can drop them after fights as well. And then you can trade them to a special store to get cool weapons, armor, and Poundmates.