The Backlog Check-in Vol. 239: 7/30/22: Hard West II/Sword and Fairy: Together Forever Edition

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argyle
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 239: 7/30/22: Hard West II/Sword and Fairy: Together Forever Edition

Post by argyle »

canedaddy wrote: Thu Aug 04, 2022 12:56 pm Wait, you already finished a NG+ run?? Whoa. I'm a bit of a slowpoke, aren't I.
I basically finished it - I stopped right outside the door to the final boss. Was gonna do the save backup schtick and just got sidetracked on something else first. Iunno about slow tho, I know I had over 200 hours in it at the end, and Tam had more than me and she hasn't finished her first run.
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed
if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I
became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the
desire to be very grown up.” ― C.S. Lewis

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crimson_tide
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 239: 7/30/22: Hard West II/Sword and Fairy: Together Forever Edition

Post by crimson_tide »

I beat the story mode of Street Fighter V. That was really whelming. And that's objectively because of the moment when Zangief shattered a katana on his pecs because he was flexing really hard. I mean, Capcom for some reason has just decided to absolutely crap the bed with story modes but this and MVCI had exactly one moment that was awesome that make the drudgery and terrible storytelling worth the trip. MVCI had Ryu dragon punching a dragon from Monster Hunter in Wakanda for some reason. Also, Morrigan being extremely horny for Ghost Rider was funny. Oh well, hopefully the arcade story endings will be fun. Onward to... probably Dusk Diver :) .

Oh and this FANG person might be the worst Street Fighter character ever and he's all over the story mode. At least the Hungarian oil dude was hilarious. I don't know what they were doing with FANG...
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canedaddy
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 239: 7/30/22: Hard West II/Sword and Fairy: Together Forever Edition

Post by canedaddy »

crimson_tide wrote: Thu Aug 04, 2022 2:57 pm Oh and this FANG person might be the worst Street Fighter character ever and he's all over the story mode. At least the Hungarian oil dude was hilarious. I don't know what they were doing with FANG...

Yeah, he seems like the bad result of a create-a-player generator.

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crimson_tide
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 239: 7/30/22: Hard West II/Sword and Fairy: Together Forever Edition

Post by crimson_tide »

Old man...bruh...fam...I thought the fighting game community was just being extra about him but...oof. AND they dropped Sagat from the lineup for him. SAGAT, CMON MAN!!!... :cry:

So Dusk Diver is just the most PS2 PS4 game that's not named Guardians of the Galaxy. It does go the extra step of way too many tutorial screens and having a not great but serviceable camera helped by ludicrously huge amount of wide sweeping attacks to compensate, but it's cool. I am going to switch it in and out of rotation. Phase is right, it's mad repetitive but fun. I don't want to start DQ Builders 2 just yet, I should go back to Lost Judgement. Bummer... :P

Oh and Yoku's Island Express is just delightful. I THINK this is going to be a search action game (I ain't using the portmanteau) but...with pinball? Somehow? I don't care, it's damn pleasant and is going into rotation as well :) .
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Phaseknox
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 239: 7/30/22: Hard West II/Sword and Fairy: Together Forever Edition

Post by Phaseknox »

crimson_tide wrote: Wed Aug 03, 2022 10:23 pmSo I showed some restraint during the Summer Sale.
I didn’t. :P I bought like 35 games, and I still might buy more.
crimson_tide wrote: Thu Aug 04, 2022 8:52 pmSo Dusk Diver is just the most PS2 PS4 game that's not named Guardians of the Galaxy. It does go the extra step of way too many tutorial screens and having a not great but serviceable camera helped by ludicrously huge amount of wide sweeping attacks to compensate, but it's cool. I am going to switch it in and out of rotation. Phase is right, it's mad repetitive but fun.
I’m glad that you’re liking it, I played quite a bit of it but I’m not sure that I’m going to stick with it. The repetition is starting to get to me. As you know it only takes place in two areas, the real world city shopping district and the otherworldly dimension dungeon. What you see and do in the beginning is basically what you continue to see and do throughout its entirety with very little change or variation. The story, characters and combat were interesting and fun enough to keep me playing, but now it’s gotten to the point where I’ve kind of had my fill of its repetitive gameplay loop. I haven’t played it in a few days so I’m going to go back to it and see if taking a break from it has rejuvenated it a bit for me, because I would like to finish it since I played a lot of it.
Last edited by Phaseknox on Fri Aug 05, 2022 10:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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canedaddy
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 239: 7/30/22: Hard West II/Sword and Fairy: Together Forever Edition

Post by canedaddy »

I finished Elden Ring last night.

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argyle was right, per usual... I loved it. There are some issues with balance, and the story was pretty tough for me to follow, but I had a great time with the game. My playstyle meshed with it perfectly... I ran into walls many times, but broke through by exploring other areas, getting new stuff and leveling up.

I didn't have to summon help the whole game, which surprised me. Some of the bosses took me MANY tries, but it worked the way it's supposed to... I'd adjust my equipment and approach, learn their patterns and eventually take them down.

I save scummed to get the three ending trophies... leaving me one missed legendary weapon away from platinum. :x I'm going to see if I can get it in a quick NG+ run, but I don't care enough about trophies to spend hours on it.
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isthatallyougot
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 239: 7/30/22: Hard West II/Sword and Fairy: Together Forever Edition

Post by isthatallyougot »

canedaddy wrote: Fri Aug 05, 2022 10:08 am I finished Elden Ring last night.

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argyle was right, per usual... I loved it. There are some issues with balance, and the story was pretty tough for me to follow, but I had a great time with the game. My playstyle meshed with it perfectly... I ran into walls many times, but broke through by exploring other areas, getting new stuff and leveling up.

I didn't have to summon help the whole game, which surprised me. Some of the bosses took me MANY tries, but it worked the way it's supposed to... I'd adjust my equipment and approach, learn their patterns and eventually take them down.

I save scummed to get the three ending trophies... leaving me one missed legendary weapon away from platinum. :x I'm going to see if I can get it in a quick NG+ run, but I don't care enough about trophies to spend hours on it.
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Dragon kick your a$$ into the Milky Way!
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Phaseknox
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 239: 7/30/22: Hard West II/Sword and Fairy: Together Forever Edition

Post by Phaseknox »

I quit playing both Dusk Diver and Sparklite, they’re just too repetitive. Sparklite starts out like it’s going to be an action adventure game similar to the first Zelda on NES, but it’s actually a procedurally generated roguelite. It has some appealing aspects to it, but I was just finding it too same-y looking and playing without much feeling of progression. I can see people who really like roguelites possibly enjoying it, but it’s not for me.
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crimson_tide
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 239: 7/30/22: Hard West II/Sword and Fairy: Together Forever Edition

Post by crimson_tide »

Imma stick with Dusk Diver, bruh. I think you would hate The World Ends With You or Neo because this game is just that same setup as this. Small section of a city to explore with little interactivity or variety that's more combat focused. Again, Dusk Diver is certainly not those game changers. But it's cute for what it is. As long as it doesn't get up its own butt down the line, I can see getting to roll credits in it since it's dumb short :) .

$5 for this Sparklite? Eh, I'm probably going to grab it before the sale ends. There's some small purchases I want to make before it's over, it looks cute. Probably won't see it through but it does have co-op that the kiddo might dig. She keeps wanting to go back to Cat Quest 2 but it's a bit much for her. Could be a good time for us, thanks fam :) .

In other news, Lost Judgment has won me over. It took ten hours but the side cases are really bonkers and I am now intrigued to go deeper into this high school. I don't want to beat more children (though the last 'teenager' I fought could have been a literal powerlifter, the boy was a mass monster) but the school stories in the DLC will be my jam. It seems to be going in the Yakuza 0 direction of just do all the things. I deeply enjoyed my time with 0 because of that variety. Hopefully now that Lost Judgment has opened up a bit, it will get there too... probably should have been a little less front loaded though ;) .
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Phaseknox
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 239: 7/30/22: Hard West II/Sword and Fairy: Together Forever Edition

Post by Phaseknox »

crimson_tide wrote: Fri Aug 05, 2022 9:29 pm Imma stick with Dusk Diver, bruh. I think you would hate The World Ends With You or Neo because this game is just that same setup as this. Small section of a city to explore with little interactivity or variety that's more combat focused. Again, Dusk Diver is certainly not those game changers. But it's cute for what it is. As long as it doesn't get up its own butt down the line, I can see getting to roll credits in it since it's dumb short :) .
My biggest complaint with it is that it only offers one dungeon with just the layout of it changing each time that you go through it. It’s always visually the same, and you fight the same enemy types over and over again. This didn’t really bother me for a while, but eventually it did because it started to feel too same-y. By the way, it’s not dumb short. The side stuff is almost mandatory to do to unlock new abilities, moves and upgrade character stats. I played it for several hours, and I still had a good amount of game left. I like a lot about the game, but I started to feel like I was doing the same exact things in the same exact areas over and over again and I lost the desire to continue playing it at that point.
crimson_tide wrote: Fri Aug 05, 2022 9:29 pm$5 for this Sparklite? Eh, I'm probably going to grab it before the sale ends. There's some small purchases I want to make before it's over, it looks cute. Probably won't see it through but it does have co-op that the kiddo might dig. She keeps wanting to go back to Cat Quest 2 but it's a bit much for her. Could be a good time for us, thanks fam :) .
Sparklite is a charming and cute 2D pixel art game, and looks and plays somewhat like the classic top-down view Zelda games. But the environments/levels are procedurally generated, and have a somewhat random and repetitive look and feel to them that I don’t like as much as handcrafted environments/levels. They’re also not that visually varied, there’s a lot of sameness to them. But there’s an appeal to its design structure of slowly improving your abilities and stats to have better and longer runs to see more of what the levels and game in general have to offer. I was finding it a little difficult, and not being able to make it very far through the levels. I prefer more traditional action adventure games to roguelites like this, but I could possibly see myself going back to it if the mood strikes me because I was having some fun with it.
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